Students Scrub Forgotten War Memorial

WASHINGTON, D.C. - It was an odd sight, really. A small group of students and teachers from a D.C. charter school and a Houston, Texas middle school swept and scrubbed an all-but-forgotten memorial just north of Independence Ave.

It's the monument to soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coastguardsmen from the District of Columbia who fought, as the memorial says, "in the world war." Today, we call it World War I.

One of the sweepers, Chike Nwaezeapu, an eighth grader at Capital City Public Charter School, has grown up in the nation's capital, but had never visited D.C.'s World War I Memorial.

"I didn't know where it was, what it was for, anything," Nwaezeapu said.

Nwaezeapu knows now that 26,000 District residents fought in that conflict, and nearly 500 of them died. Those 500 names are inscribed on the memorial, which is now cracked and dirty.

Seth Whitt, an eighth grader at Creekwood Middle School in Houston, Texas, believes people have forgotten about World War I because, "...it was so long ago, and on one really made a memorial for it for the whole [of] American veterans -- just D.C. veterans. I think [people] have just forgotten about it."

Whitt and his classmates got very interested in World War I when a photo exhibit of veterans visited their school. Since then, students at Creekwood Middle School have raised $14,000 toward the refurbishment and expansion of the D.C. World War I Memorial.

A new non-profit called the World War I Memorial Foundation is raising money for the project, which the National Park Service estimates will cost a total of $5 million.

For more on the memorial, follow this link.