Harlingen High School honors veterans with motivational skit

Harlingen High School honored veterans with a motivational skit for Veterans Day on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. (Travis Whitehead | Valley Morning Star)

HARLINGEN — It was amazing.

That’s how Joaquin Chavarin described the Harlingen High School Veterans Day observation Monday afternoon.

“It was really motivational,” said Chavarin, 40, who served in the Marine Corps in Iraq.

“All of it, the skit was amazing, the music, it was perfect,” he said.

Chavarin and other veterans and students and administrations had gathered in the main gym of Harlingen High School to see the spectacular event presented by the school’s JROTC program. The event began in the school library with a lunch of enchiladas and refried beans and Mexican rice, and veterans wore desert fatigues and caps and shirts declaring their branches of service.

“Veterans Day to me is honoring all veterans who answered the call to help protect America’s freedom,” said Terry Higginbotham, 67, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran.

Inside the gym, he and other veterans crowded into chairs arranged especially for them while students filled the bleachers, and the HHS Cardinal Band performed patriotic songs which set the festive and noble occasion. There was the posting of colors and the Cardinal Choir sang the National Anthem.

A skit performed by Nataniel Squires, 15, Alexandrea Preler, 14, and Everly Ledesma, 9, portrayed a military family dealing with the realities of deployment and sacrifice.

Everly performed a brilliant solo, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” demonstrating authentic talent and passion.

“It’s just amazing how I can do that for the audience,” said Everly, a fourth grader at Lee Means Elementary School of Arts and Sciences.

Preler delivered a very good performance as Everly’s mother. There was crying and tragic emotions as her husband Sgt. Squire said he had to deploy to Iraq. And she performed the role of the strong and grieving mother very well for the audience

“It was very exciting,” she said. “I love to perform, I have always loved performing.”

Her grandfather, Homer Salinas, is an Army veteran who served from 1980 to 1992.

“I told her her grandmother had to live through that,” said Salinas, 63, who served in Germany, Ft. Knox, Ft. Benning, and Iraq.

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