I am in the 4th grade, I hope you like the cards I made for you,” a Goliad Elementary student reads his homemade card. Mrs. Thomason's 4th grade class has learned a lesson that they probably wouldn’t learn through their text books. “Life gets so busy that we sometimes forget about the people who are fighting for us and our freedom, or fighting for others in the other countries,” Mrs. Thomason says. Austen Hubbard, a Corpsman for the US Navy has been serving the United States for four years. Tuesday 18 Goliad 4th graders served their ESL tutor’s son with a care package expressing their love for him. Mrs. Thomason says that this project was very special for her class, in more ways than one. “He’s been deployed twice and this would be a good way of getting my kids to understand we need to stop and think and give back.” Over a decade ago Hubbard roamed the Goliad campus and now he is roaming overseas fighting for freedom an admirable job which these students respect. “Austen would be a hero to my class, just because we talked about him and especially because I have talked not just about Austen but I’ve talked about other people. Like, I told my student’s they don’t go to movies, they don’t get to do the things that we do everyday. They go to bed at night wondering, ‘Is it going to be safe tonight?’ and you need to think about that,” Mrs. Thomason says. Toothpaste, gum and beef jerky, are just some of the items that fill the brown box for Hubbard, but the most important message is in the cards. “It says God Bless America. War shall end. Thank you. And it says from Tyler Berry, age 10 from Goliad Elementary,” a note that a 4th grader reads out loud to his hero. Hubbard hopes to visit the students the next time that he comes home to visit his family.
