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students launched an Internet search but could find only sparse details on what Sendler may have done. Fast forward to today. With the help of a Jewish organization familiar with Sendler, the students tracked down the Polish woman, residing in a nursing home in Warsaw. They forged a deep friendship with her, made multiple trips to Poland to interview her and those she had saved, and accumulated the most extensive clearinghouse of research and artifacts of her life and her contribution to history. They completed their 10-minute play for that National History Day project but then expanded it into a 35-minute drama that they still perform around the country and the worldto standing-room-only 225 at most recent watch it and weep.

They started a foundation in name to keep her story alive, and one of the students this year helped launch an education center based in Kansas that helps schools nationwide assist students in tackling similar research projects, including one in Illinois that has the potential to become equally well-known. A peace prize nomination And just this month, 97-year- old Sendler, a woman once virtually anonymous to the world, was in the news as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, a fact that can almost entirely be attributed to four small-town students who were so inspired by her story that it has come to define their lives, even after they have graduated from high school and college, married and begun families of their own. of said Norm Conard, their former social studies teacher. have some rural Protestant kids from a tiny place in Kansas who decide to tackle the story of a Polish Catholic woman who saved thousands of Jews, despite the fact that they were raised in a place where there is virtually no one of Jewish ancestry. It makes absolutely no sense that story would end up getting told like And yet it makes perfect sense.

Conard, who retired last year after teaching social studies at Uniontown High School for 20 years, had long taught his students a Hebrew expression: Tikkun olam which means repair the He asked them to do classroom projects that explored topics of diversity and that encouraged respect of all races and creeds. His classroom motto was, who changes one person, changes the world In 1999, Conard grouped four of his star pupils together for a History Day project and handed them a U.S. News World Report article Other the fall of 1999, we started trying to research Irena after seeing her mentioned in that article but find much of anything on said one of the former students, Sabrina Coons-Murphy, 24. The two other students assigned to the project were Jessica Shelton- Ripper, now 23, and Elizabeth Cambers, now 21. The four girls queried The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, a group that provides fi- nancial assistance to those who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.

The goal initially was to find out where Sendler was buried. But they received a stunning response from the foundation: Sendler was alive and in remarkably good health in Poland. in a The students began corresponding with Sendler and finished their play about her life. They called it in a because of one of the most dramatic facts about the Polish woman: She had buried detailed lists of the ancestry and whereabouts of each child she rescued in glass jars under an apple tree in a Warsaw yard. (When Sendler was later caught by the Nazis, she refused to reveal the location of those jars even under torture and threat of execution.) jars were literally jars of Stewart-Felt said, explaining that Sendler placed the children she rescued in the homes of non-Jewish Poles, in Catholic conventsandin orphanages.

Almost every letter Sendler sent the young Kansas today there have been dozens translated from Polish to the same way: dear, beloved girls so close to my Sendler wrote of all the ways she had spirited children out of the Warsaw ghetto after gaining entrance as a city social worker and persuading their soon-to-die parents to give them up. In some cases she would sedate crying infants and sneak them out of the ghetto in medical bags or boxes. The students soon sent Sendler a draft of their play. She critiqued it for them, requesting two minor changes, but said they had gotten virtually everything else right. need to tell she wrote, you are uniquely wise, interesting and thinking girls full of sensitivity to troubling Sendler explained that her parents had once taught her she was ethically bound to help a drowning person even if she could not swim herself.

Still performing the play In early 2000, the students performed in a for the first time. People in the small Kansas crowd were sobbing by the end. Since then, even as the young women graduated, married and began careers, they have continued to travel with the play, performing it in 20 states and three countries. A handful of other young men and women also have joined the show to round out the cast. The play has been translated into Polish and now is performed by schoolchildren in Poland as well.

This spring, in traveled to Canada at the request of Montreal resident Renata Zajdman, who at age 14 was rescued from the Warsaw ghetto by one of a small network of rescuers who reported to Sendler. Zajdman, today a close friend of was there the first time she met the Kansas students. credit all goes to those kids in said Zajdman, 78. it were not for them, Irena would still be living in poverty. The president of Poland would not be kissing her hand.

No one would bother with her. The children of Kansas put her on the The Nobel nomination seems to be only the beginning of the growing recognition of Sendler. Angelina Jolie reportedly is taking the role of Sendler in an upcoming movie. A surrogate mother In these final years of life, a much quieter but perhaps no less moving story line of salvation has begun playing out for the Polish rescuer. As her story has become better-known, Sendler has been nicknamed the of the children of the a title that holds particular significance for the four young women from Kansas, three of whom do not have mothers in their own lives.

(Two of the mothers have died; one was raised by her grandparents.) has become something of a surrogate mother for Conard said. is now the force that guides so much of what they Today each of the women wears a small heart necklace given to them by Sendler. They e-mail and write her regularly and are planning a trip to visit her on her 100th birthday. And the most cherished item they own is a history-steeped glass jar from Poland. Photo for the Tribune by Chris Cummins As part of a National History Day project, Kansas high school students wrote a play about Irena Sendler.

The project started eight years ago, but they still perform the play today. Megan Stewart-Felt (far right) portrays Sendler while rehearsing with Jessica Shelton-Ripper (left) and Sabrina Coons-Murphy last week in Ft. Scott. SENDLER: Audiences weep at their play CONTINUEDFROMPAGE1 American International Societies for Yad Vashem photo credit all goes to those kids in said Renata Zajdman (bottom), who was saved by rescuers who reported to Irena Sendler. Irena Sendler Project photo Irena Sendler with her children in May 1951 in Warsaw.

17 MWCHICAGO TRIBUNE FROM PAGE ONE SECTION1 For video of the play and more photos, go to chicago tribune.com/sendler IN THE WEB EDITION their initial tour of duty ends. While the Army managed to meet recruiting goals for the last fiscal year, commanders have acknowledged that the terrain is only getting rougher as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue. Last week, Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for personnel, said the Army will continue to rely on the unpopular program that requires some soldiers to stay with their unit beyond their retirement or re-enlistment dates.

Earlier this month, Army leaders reported that for the fifth straight year they gave more waivers to recruits with criminal historiesand medical issues, and that fewer than 80 percent of new enlistees had a high school diploma. A relatively strong job with resistance by parents to steering young people toward military further complicating the mission. And senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, say they worry they are losing many of their best troops to private security companies working in Iraq and Afghanistan that can offer two to three times what the military pays. order to be competitive, we simply have to be in the marketplace with said Rochelle, explaining the reasoning behind the admittedly ways the Army hopes to beef up recruitment over the next year. of Spec.

Victor Taylor, 32, who plans on re-enlisting next month to a six-year contract with the New York National Guard, said the cash incentive is not the reason he decided to stick with his unit, the 42nd Infantry Division. But he acknowledged that the $15,000 bonus he will receive is a nice perk. Taylor, who served six years in the Marines in the 1990s, said his contract expired at the beginning of October, weeks before his already has spent a year in set to head to Egypt for a training exercise. A former deputy in upstate New York, Taylor said he decided to join the Guard in 2006 because he missed the camaraderie of the military. At his suggestion, Taylor said, he signed a one-year contract earlier this month as a bridge until his unit heads for Egypt, where he plans to sign a six-year extension.

By signing the long-term contract in Egypt, he ensures his signing bonus will be tax-free. I was Marine, you never heard of these kinds of said Taylor, adding that he has been on the lookout for potential recruits so he can cash in on the peer-to-peer recruiting program. is a lot of flexibility and a lot of incentives available right now. I think it is what it is because in a time of Money to aid families The Pentagon is hoping to receive billions of dollars in next defense spending bill to help bolster the needs of military families, an issue that commanders say is central to whether a service member reenlists. Recruiters have a well- known saying that sign a recruit, you re-enlist a Deep in the House version of the defense appropriations bill, $670 million has been set aside for family advocacy programs and more than $600 million for child-care centers.

A whopping $1.6 billion is designated for education programs, including allotments to pay for college loan deferrals. As the Army tries to build its force level over the next two years and the Marine Corps starts its own dramatic expansion, commanders and Congress have come to realize they need to pay more attention to caring for the families, according to military advocates. Last week, the Army leaders announced a new initiative called the Army Family Covenant, a pledge that commits to spending $1.4 billion in 2008 on Army family programs. Army officials have said repeatedly that retention, not just bringing in new recruits, is central to the expansion. is saying we use around here that, momma happy, no one is said Kathy Moakler, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association.

Army is starting to think outside the box on retention and recruiting. There is a realization that supporting families is part of the cost of this Gen.David McKiernan, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the covenant is less about starting new programs and more about putting and into existing programs that military families rely on. He said that commanders in Europe recently moved to increase child care availability from 55 to 70 hours per week, a step necessary as more military spouses are finding themselves temporarily becoming single parents while their soldiers deploy. idea is to make the leadership responsible and accountable and then give them the right resources to take care of Army McKiernan said.

got to do now is put our money where our mouth RECRUITS: Support for families is central issue CONTINUEDFROMPAGE1 As the U.S. Army fights two wars while planning a major expansion, it is offering or considering incentives such as these to recruit and keep troops: $45,000 toward buying a house or new business Retention bonuses for those with special skills bonuses for getting friends to sign up Beefed-up child care Education programs, including college loan deferrals Special incentives Retired social studies teacher Norm Conard and one of his former students, Megan Stewart- Felt, from the Irena Sendler Project recently opened the Lowell Milken Center in Ft. Scott, Kan. The center assists teachers and students worldwide in creating projects that teach respect and understanding among people regardless of race, religion or creed. The center encourages education projects that feature unsung heroes, like Sendler, as role models to the Funded by the Milken family, a leading U.S.

philanthropy, the centeris assisting in the production of a student-written documentary about the community of Silvis, Ill. The project will document the story of how one street in Silvis came to be named Hero Street. The history of Hero Street is dramatic: Large numbers of Mexicanscame to Silvis after World War I to work inmanufac- turing shops and strengthen a workforce diminished bythe war. These large immigrant families could not find homes, so they moved into boxcars north of the railroad tracks. Later they wereforced to move their makeshift homes to what then was Second Street so they would have to pay property taxes and utilities.

It is believed that 57 men from that street went to fight in World War II and Korea; eight never returned. The street reportedly contributed more men to military service in the two wars than any other place of comparable size in the U.S., and the town renamed it Hero Street in 1969. The center, opened just a few weeks ago, will launch a Web site in the next several weeks: www.lowellmilkencenter.org. Scharnberg Finding unsung heroes Product: CTMAIN PubDate: 10-21-2007 Zone: MW Edition: BDOG Page: 1-17 User: bohap Time: Color:.