ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) -A class of seventh graders in the Fort Zumwalt School District spent Veterans Day honoring a local Vietnam veteran.

Students in Tracy Hubecky’s seventh-grade social studies class got the opportunity to write letters to Gerald Cernicek, a veteran of the Vietnam War who recently returned from a Freedom Honor Flight to Washington D.C.

“I floated the idea by them and they all wanted to take part,” said Hubecky. “To read what they wrote, I could feel the respect, the empathy, it blew me away.”

Cernicek spent 11 months in Vietnam with the U.S. Army when he was just 19, returning home in 1969. Upon returning home, he remembers the less-than-warm welcome he and others received.

“Got a lot of nasty comments and stuff, I can understand it, it was not a popular war

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