Kindergarten to eighth-grade students gathered outside St. Viator Elementary School on Monday morning to commemorate Veterans Day with a flag ceremony honoring an alum killed while serving in Vietnam.
Cpl. Charles “Chip” Kefer Jr. graduated from the Northwest Side school in 1959. He went on to serve in the U.S. Army and was killed in action in Vietnam on May 1, 1970.
When the school’s old American flag became damaged weeks ago, a friend and former classmate of Kefer’s donated a new flag to be raised in his honor.
“I’m sure that he [Kefer] didn’t, or his family didn’t, think about his sacrifice meaning something 50 years later, but it really does,” Principal Lisa Reiger said Monday. “It’s important that our children know a little bit more about why we say the Pledge of Allegiance and have a flag, and what it really means.”
Once the new flag was raised Monday, Reiger explained to students how to retire an American flag that has “served its purpose, become tattered or torn.”
Reiger’s husband, who served in the Marine Corps, properly folded the school’s old American flag and placed it in a fire pit to burn.
Alum Tony Luczak, who served in the Coast Guard, brought a few flags of his to properly retire during the ceremony.
Luczak graduated from the school in 1980 but said his family members have been attending St. Viator since the late 1940s.
His children graduated in the early 2000s, but he and his wife, Kelly, have remained connected with the school community. The Luczaks were thrilled to receive an email from the alumni network over the weekend, inviting them to Monday’s ceremony.
“I like how they included the children, to let them realize the importance of the flag,” Kelly Luczak told the Sun-Times.
At the end of the ceremony, each student placed a miniature American flag around the base of the flag pole, next to a new plaque dedicated to Kefer and his Silver Star medal — the third-highest military combat decoration.
“This might make one of the kids here grow up to be a service member,” Tony Luczak said.
Reiger knows there are other veteran alums out there, and while they will continue to honor Kefer, she wants to find ways to pay tribute to the service of other community members.
“I’m hoping that others will come forward and say, ‘My brother, my sister, my dad, [served],'” Reiger said. “I would love to have more statements like [Kefer’s] around our campus that really show what it means to be a true patriot.”
St. Viator Elementary School on Monday raised a new flag and dedicated a plaque in honor of Cpl. Charles “Chip” Kefer Jr., an alum who was killed in action in Vietnam and received the Silver Star Medal.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times