Deaf kids, their Marine friend, & a blog

Simply too cool for words. Thanks to The Mudville Gazette.


Students at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School at Gallaudet University had used e-mail and a school Web log to get first-hand accounts of the insurgency in Iraq and the daily survival of a U.S. Marine stationed there.
Yesterday, the 42 students met their personal link for the first time. Sgt. Earl "Jay" Beatty, 31, joined the school's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at a homecoming ceremony on Gallaudet's campus in Northeast. He returned home to Mitchellville March 18.
The students, who are deaf or have partial hearing loss, used sign-language interpreters to thank a tearful Sgt. Beatty and his wife, Donna, 30, for their contributions to their country and for their correspondence with the students. "People who went to Vietnam didn't get thanks. Just to see how important this was to these kids means a lot," Sgt. Beatty said.