Rancho Cucamonga High School students learn real-life lessons from local veterans

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (KABC) -- Students at Rancho Cucamonga High School were recently treated to a history lesson they never could have learned by reading a textbook.

Last Thursday, hundreds of history students filled the school gymnasium, sitting down in small groups with more than 200 veterans of the armed forces. They listened to the veterans tell stories from their experiences overseas and share valuable life lessons.

The event is known as "Rancho Remembers," and has been presented every year since 2007, except during the pandemic. Veterans from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War took part in the event.

Organizer and teacher Aaron Bishop said the event is just as meaningful for the veterans as it is educational for the students.

"These guys get to open up, and you'll see the emotions, you'll see the tears," Bishop said. "I don't think the kids have had an opportunity to sit down with someone who's experienced history like this."

Vietnam veteran Ray Moon talked to the students at his table about the threat of communism.

"(Lenin) was willing to take one, two, three people and kill you, so long as one person was communist," Moon said.

However, veterans also shared the more humorous side of their deployments. Navy veteran Daniel Gurrola told the students at his table about the difficulties of just trying to eat their meals.

"You had to eat with one hand, because the other hand had to shove all the flies away," Gurrola told students.

One of the younger veterans in the room shared experiences from the war on terror in 2003.

"By Christmas the same year, I was already in Iraq, fighting the Taliban," said army veteran Andy Valenzuela, who only months after graduating from high school was deployed to the Middle East.

Teacher Aaron Bishop said at their first Rancho Remembers event in 2007, there were 33 World War II veterans in attendance. At this year's event there were only three, including 102-year-old pilot Iris Critchell, who shared her thoughts on the differences between the world today, and the world as it existed at the time of her service.

"Today, people are able to be in touch with each other across the world, and to find out that there are others," Critchell said. "We'll see how humanity can adjust to this. It's a big challenge."