Thursday, May 23: Memorial Day Exhibition

Clover Park High School

By Northwest Military News Team on May 11, 2013

Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl, USMC (Ret.) kept a journal of his time on a ship traveling around the western Pacific, when he was in Desert Storm, and the third was serving as the military escort in charge of accompanying the remains of 19-year-old Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps - who was killed by enemy fire in 2004 in Iraq's al-Anbar province - from Delaware's Dover Port Mortuary to his hometown of Dubois, Wyo. The first-person memoir Strobl wrote while traveling with Phelps' remains was the work HBO grabbed for its movie, Taking Chance. The story is less an Iraq film than it is a home-front road movie. Kevin Bacon plays Strobl who encounters many ordinary citizens who were moved and affected by the death of a Marine they never saw. The film has underlying themes of honor, empathy and respect.

As part of a special Memorial Day tribute, the students and staff at Clover Park High School will screen Taking Chance at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 23.

The film is part of the school's Memorial Day Exhibition featuring a JROTC performance of a formal retreat ceremony and recreation of tomb guard at Arlington National Ceremony, student created memorial displays of America's conflicts from the American Revolution to Afghanistan, and the "The Arlington Project" - a poignant display of 6,600 individually named markers honoring the fallen warriors from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

MEMORIAL DAY EXHIBITION, 5:30 p.m., Thursday, May 23, Clover Park High School is at 11023 Gravelly Lake Dr. SW, Lakewood, 253.583.5500