Ryken Teacher, Students to Research WWII Navy Veterans

LEONARDTOWN — Two sailors who served in World War II and are buried at Quantico will have their life stories researched, written and read aloud at their graves by students from St. Mary’s Ryken High School.

Ryken teacher Coby Treadway is one of 56 teachers nationwide selected for Silent Heroes: Untold Stories of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard in World War II, National History Day announced on Veterans Day. The program is paid for by a grant from the Veterans Legacy Program at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Treadway and his students will spend the school year on two Navy veterans chosen for the project: Aviation Technician’s Mate John Strong Mackenzie and Personnelman (Recruiter) Esther Jeanne DerVartanian Oliver. Both are buried or memorialized at the National Memorial Cemetery at Quantico in Triangle, Virginia, about 60 miles from Leonardtown by road.

The assignment goes well past a classroom report. Each team publishes a profile of its veterans on the VA’s Veterans Legacy Memorial and on the Silent Heroes website, covering their lives before the war, their military service and what they did for their communities afterward. In spring 2027 the Ryken students are to travel to Quantico and deliver a eulogy for each veteran. National History Day said it will produce video versions of the eulogies to go with the online profiles.

How the research works

Nationally, the 56 teachers and more than 800 students will research more than 120 veterans who served in the war, came home, and are buried or memorialized in a national or state veterans cemetery. The teachers come from 32 states, and the veterans rest in 50 cemeteries.

Teams meet monthly with George Mason University historian Christopher Hamner to study the Navy and Coast Guard, the war and the experience of veterans returning home. Nine National History Day research mentors support them. Students work from genealogy and newspaper databases, local libraries and historical societies, and the veterans’ Official Military Personnel Files, which are requested from the National Personnel Records Center.

National History Day Executive Director Cathy Gorn said in the announcement that students come away with research skills and a tie to “the personal and local histories that they have contributed to.”

The Navy focus has a natural audience in St. Mary’s County, where Naval Air Station Patuxent River was commissioned in 1943, in the middle of the war, and remains the county’s largest employer. The announcement did not say whether either of the veterans assigned to Ryken had a connection to Southern Maryland; establishing where they lived and served is part of what the students are being asked to find out.

Three Maryland schools chosen

Treadway is one of three Maryland teachers in this year’s group. The others are:

• Taila McKenzie of William Wirt Middle School in Riverdale, whose students will research two Navy veterans at Cheltenham State Veterans Cemetery in Prince George’s County
• Benjamin Guidot of Severn Run High School in Severn, whose students will research three Navy and Coast Guard veterans at Garrison Forest Veterans Cemetery in Owings Mills

Silent Heroes is a continuing program. Last year’s edition focused on Marine Corps veterans, and National History Day has posted a sample profile from that group showing what the finished work looks like.

National History Day is a nonprofit based in College Park that was founded in 1974. It is best known for the student research contest of the same name, which draws more than half a million students a year and ends with a national competition at the University of Maryland.