World War II veteran and Canastota Central School District alumnus Robert Stokes visited Roberts Street Elementary School on May 23, to thank the 4th, 5th and 6th grade students who recently surprised him with close to 200 letters in a mail call operation.
The mail call operation was arranged by Steven Stokes, Robert Stokes’ son and a former member of the Canastota Central School District Board of Education. The students’ letters were presented to Robert Stokes on last month, upon his return to Central New York from Washington, DC. He had flown there with about 80 of his fellow World War II and Korean War veterans on an Honor Flight.
Honor Flight, Inc. is a non-profit organization that transports America’s veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit those memorials dedicated service men and women.
The tradition of military mail call is to provide service men and women, especially those who can feel isolated while deployed overseas, with communication from loved ones and supporters back home. Steven Stokes said that during war years the campaign to get civilians writing letters, “made people re-aware of the service and sacrifice of military people, and the things they go through to serve their country.” That inspired him to arrange for a special mail call for his father to coincide with the Honor Flight, with help from the students at Roberts Street Elementary School.
In his address to the students, Robert Stokes thanked them for their letter writing efforts and their interest in his service. He answered questions about his induction into the U.S. Army in 1944, his training in the Infantry, his deployment to Germany and Europe and duties during the final months of the war, and his discharge at the rank of Technician 5th Grade.