It's rare that I read the local news paper, especially since none of the Heinisch children attend the Wawasee school system. Once in awhile I would look at it for sports news, but since they dropped that section this winter, I just don't take the time to peruse the online publication anymore. For some reason, last night I decided to check the headlines. I think that I was mostly looking to see if any of the local schools had changed to online learning due to Covid concerns. I didn't find any information about that, but I did find other school news that was interesting.
Several months ago I had heard that someone had proposed to the Wawasee school board to change the name of "Warrior" Field to Michael Field in honor of a local military veteran that had lost his life in World War II. He had died a hero and had earned the medal of honor. At the time I thought it was a nice gesture, but didn't think that it made a lot of sense as this individual died well before Wawasee had consolidated. Since he graduated from Milford High School, I thought that it would be nicer to have something in Milford name after him.
Last night I read an article that members from the nearby American Legion had returned to the school board with a petition for the name change. I was a little surprised that this was still a subject as I thought the board had decided against changing the name of Warrior Field. As I read further into the article I understood why this group was still pushing forward. A nephew to the war hero was someone that we all knew well from our days at Milford. He was an odd person to say the least and there were two things that he was most passionate about - the Wawasee school system and his family. Thus, it didn't surprise me that he was heavily involved in this petition. What did surprise me, however, was how incredibly mean the comments below the article were.
I read a couple of those comments to Doug which I thought were over the top, but didn't think anything more about it until tonight when I checked the online news source for any update on the subject. They didn't have anything new about the football field name change, but there was another article that caught my eye. Someone was suing the town of Syracuse for damages due to a sewer issue. Upon reading more about it, I realized that the public works had sent someone Meg's age out to handle the problem. I couldn't believe that as I had to think that there was someone else more experienced to take care of the situation. As surprising as that was, what really shocked me was the lack of comments about that situation. Only twelve people replied and no one was really negative about the town on the issue. In contrast, the article from last night about Warrior Field had increased from 40 comments to over a hundred. Almost all of them were negative calling out the community for being "woke", stating that we're all Warriors and do not need to change the name of the field, and that the soldier already has a memorial in Milford and didn't need anymore recognition. So many were unkind that I hoped that those who had started the petition didn't read them. Once I closed my laptop I decided that I didn't really need all of the negativity either, so I guess that I will just go back to skipping the local news source for awhile.
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