We received this letter from a teacher who brought a group of students to our Bushnell Children's Theatre presentation of the play Letters Home, and wanted to share!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing Letters Home to the Bushnell Children's Series! The performance today was powerful and extremely moving. My students, my colleague and I were so fortunate to be able to experience this thoughtful presentation. You were so right when you said that Letters Home puts a personal face to this war. My only regret is that more schools did not bring their students to give them the opportunity to see the show but I thank the Bushnell Programming department for thinking "out of the box" and bringing this moving portrayal to Hartford. I hope your Peace Day Program this evening goes equally as well.

I must add that Letters Home was particularly poignant for me because of a young family friend who was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan two months ago. Nick was 21 years old and my grandson Peter's longtime close friend. They both grew up in Yarmouth on Cape Cod. Nick's death put a personal face to the war for me for the first time. Nick was a Marine who met and shook hands with President Obama when he visited Camp Lejeune this past spring. He was inspired by the President's speech about the additional expeditionary forces being sent to Afghanistan. Nick had served in Iraq last year and was not scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan but he volunteered to go. He was honored with an incredible military funeral in the tight-knit community on Cape Cod and the Obamas visited Nick's family on their way back from Martha's Vineyard in August.

I kept seeing Nick and my grandson Peter in the faces of the actors today. I was moved to tears by the stories that were told through each soldier's letters. When an individual's fate was flashed on the screen and we learned that some of them had been killed it was as if a person we had come to know had died. While a sad and moving story, it is one that needs to be repeated and who better to tell the story than those who have lived it.

Thank you again,

Verne-Marie Kozak
Gifted Program Coordinator
Newington High School