Kiski Area students documenting the lives of local veterans

Merle Sober climbed Mt. Fuji while waiting for battle during the Korean War, and James Thomas Simko helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp during World War II when SS soldiers began shooting and burning its prisoners just before the arrival of Simko’s “Fighting 69th” infantry.

The stories of Sober of Allegheny Township and Simko, a Vandergrift High School graduate, might never have been known, let alone preserved, had it not been for a Kiski Area School District history class supplemented with a liberal sprinkling of technology to launch the Kiski Area Veterans Website three years ago.

Students have looked for, found, researched and, in some cases, interviewed close to 500 veterans with ties to the communities in the school district. All are documented on the website and categorized by war and can be searched by name.

“We’re barely scratching the surface,” said Dan Smith, a former social studies department chairman and current supervisor of technology integration for the district who helped set up the website with fellow teacher Jim Christie.

The project evolved into a volunteer effort where students are actively seeking more veterans, dead or alive, to document for the website.

The students behind the veterans website reached out to Apollo-Ridge and other school districts in hopes of developing an Alle-Kiski Valley-wide veterans website.

Recently, the Kiski Area website team sent letters seeking veterans with ties to the school district communities to about 40 VFWs and American Legions within a 15-mile radius of the school.

The website tries to document more than mere military service dates.

Through student research, the public knows more about someone like Simko, who, after he helped liberate the concentration camp, went on to work, marry and have a son who died soon after birth. Simko fought Alzheimer’s and died only 12 days after his wife.

With Simko and most of the veterans, students have to piece together their lives, scouring public and military records for details and requesting information from families.

Sober recently visited the school, and students had the opportunity to interview him. They even brought their friends to talk to a “live veteran.”

“For a lot of kids, their grandparents might not be alive to talk about being in war, if they even were and if they even talk about it,” said Brooke Bires, 16, of Allegheny Township, a junior and one of the senior editors of the veterans website.

Sober told stories about his adventures, but also told the students how terribly he missed his family.

“Listening to Merle, it’s like you went through what he went through,” said Kamdyn Serakowski, 17, of Allegheny Township, a junior, and another senior editor of the veterans website.

That is the experience the school wants for the students, according to Christie.

“You can read a book, but when you talk to or research someone who has lived it or you look into their lives back then, it makes it more personal,” Christie said.

Smith added: “It provides a human connection and brings it to a local level.”