Crippen's Crew

In honor of Patriot's Day, our school held an Essay Contest with the them of "Patriotism in Action."  One of our class' students, Ethan W., won  for his essay entitled "I'm Proud to be and American!"  The essay follows:

Aren't we all proud to be an American?  Where at least we know we're free?  We have houses and beds to sleep on instead of straw and dirt.  Most of us don't even know how blessed we are and a lot of people just take it for granted.

We all can help our country by being more obedient, respecting others, being a better friend, being happy, having charity, confidence, hope, being clean and helpful.

We also have liberty, where we can have our own religion and we don't have to be one religion.

In war, men lay down their lives for this country.  This happened when our founding fathers fought in the Revolutionary War for Independence against England and won.

I, Ethan W., am writing these last paragraphs about patriotism and 9-11-01.  The first two planes were assigned to land in Los Angeles and San Francisco but instead, two trained terrorists took over the plane, killed the pilots and flew both planes into the Twin Towers.

The third plane was supposed to go to Los Angeles as well but terrorists took it over also.  By then the people inside it heard on their cell phones about the twin towers being destroyed.  They found out this plane was going to hit the president's house and kill the president.  But before it did, a group of men and women said, "We're not going to let this plane go down and kill more innocent people and we'll fight so it won't!"

They fought and killed the terrorists.  They tried to bring the plane down to land but instead brought it down in a field, killing them all.  Many innocent Americans were killed that day.  That is major patriotism.  That group of men and women gave their lives for our country.  While the Twin Towers were destroyed and many people were killed, many more were not because of them.

Ethan W.