Caissons for the Community
Waynesboro, VA — On Monday the Fishburne Military School National Honor Society hosted its annual Fall Blood Drive. Cadets from the NHS worked to transform the Hobby-Hudgins Hall weight room into a donation collection center and set about promoting the event through flyers on campus and word of mouth.
SGT Kenneth Glass, FMS Business and Technology Instructor, serves as the faculty sponsor of the M. Frank Wooten NHS chapter. Glass noted that, although the timing is always tricky from an event such as this, the Corps of Cadets responded in true Caisson style.
“This year the blood drive was scheduled a little earlier than we normally have in the past, yet even with two major athletic events preventing many cadets from donating, we still managed to obtain 32 successful donations. This just goes to show that our Corps, both adults and cadets, is dedicated to serving the community and saving lives. I could not be more proud of the turnout for this year’s blood drive,” Glass explained.
Sporting T-shirts from Red Cross advising “Give so someone else might live”, many Cadets proudly showed off their fresh bandages and took obvious pride in their contribution.
Fishburne’s Honor Society regularly holds blood drives to help meet the need for area donors. During particularly critical shortages, the Honor Society has organized and held emergency drives in order to fill immediate needs. In December 2008, during just such a crisis, Fishburne Cadets, faculty and staff donated 45 pints of much needed blood in just five hours. A similar crisis in 2006 saw several pints of blood collected at FMS used that very day in operations for two individuals involved in a serious auto accident.
Fishburne Military School is the oldest and smallest of all military schools for boys in Virginia. Its college-prep curriculum is built upon the structure of an Army JROTC program. FMS is designated as a JROTC Honor Unit with Distinction and may nominate qualified candidates to the United States Service Academies. Fishburne hosts one of only four Summer JROTC programs in the nation, accredited by US Army Cadet Command.
