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WEST VALLEY CITY — A teacher at Westlake Junior High School stumbled upon a World War II-era suitcase while shopping at a thrift shop, and what she found inside is giving her students a hands-on history lesson.
History teacher Brenda Monson made a rare find inside a Deseret Industries thrift store over the summer while she was shopping with her daughters.
“This suitcase is setting there, and there’s a bunch of people around it,” Monson said. “Right then, I’m like, ‘I want that. I need to have this.’”
When it was donated, the suitcase had a lock on it, so employees broke it off. As they cracked it open, pieces of a soldier’s past were exposed.
"I was just so excited," Monson said. “The first thing I said was, 'How much is it?'"
The mystery suitcase full of a World War II soldier’s possessions cost her $100.
“How cool to share with my class and get them excited about Veterans Day and history,” she said.
We all play an impact on each other's lives, so just to know like the historical events that led to like our generation, it's kind of cool.
–Jelena Dragicevic, eighth-grader at Westlake Junior High School
Her class pored over the pictures and documents and looked at the uniforms Tuesday, trying to learn all they could about the soldier named James Williams Andrews.
“(There were) tons of pictures that don’t have names or dates,” Monson said. There’s a few that do, that are labeled Iwo Jima.”
“He went to serve in the war in 1944,” eighth-grader Jelena Dragicevic said.
“He also, before the war, he lived in Salt Lake City, Utah,” added eighth-grader Maleena Vongsaravanh.
Monson said Andrews served in the Air Force.
“From what I can tell, he was on Iwo Jima from ’47 to ’48,” she said.
An obituary said Andrews died in 2002. It said he had no children of his own, but he had nieces and nephews, stepchildren and grandchildren.
“I’m thinking he might have lived with his brother, who passed away last year,” said Monson, who is trying to find any of Andrews' living relatives.
As for her students, Tuesday's history lesson wasn’t boring.
"We all play an impact on each other’s lives, so just to know like the historical events that led to like our generation, it's kind of cool," Jelena said.
Contributing: Viviane Vo-Duc
