The first day of each school year always represents a special event.
Students at Bethel Park’s Abraham Lincon Elementary School experienced something special on the second day, too.
The school’s PTO organized a salute to Eric McElvenny, who was in Paris as a competitor in the 2024 Paralympic Games. Youngsters dressed in red, white and blue, many waving miniature flags on behalf of Team USA, and 14 of them gathered to hold up signs with letters and a punctuation mark to spell out the message “Go Mr McElvenny!”
His son, William, attends Abraham Lincoln, and he has two daughters in the district, Elise at Neil Armstrong Middle School and Lupe at the high school.
“Mr. McElvenny does lots of the community,” Caitlin Griffiths, Lincoln PTO secretary, said. “He’s very active. He’s always here volunteering with the kids. And so we wanted to make sure that the kids got a chance to celebrate him and his amazing accomplishments.”
He is a two-time Paralympian, finishing sixth in his division of the sprint triathlon in 2021 in Tokyo and ninth this year. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Marine Corps veteran, McElvenny lost part of his right leg when he stepped on an improvised explosive device while serving in Afghanistan.
Along with cheering for his athletic feats, Lincoln students had the opportunity to learn more about the Paralympic Games, which have taken place in the same city as the Summer Olympics every four years since 1960. One exception was the Tokyo games being postponed for a year because of the pandemic.
The Paris games took place from Aug. 28 through Sept. 8, and the United States earned 105 medals to rank third behind China and the United Kingdom. The celebration at Lincoln was Aug. 30.
