By Kaitlyn Godsey
Sports Editor

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]avid Wright Sr., a retired sergeant in the United States Army, spoke to Allie June’s English 10 students on Jan. 25 about his experience in Afghanistan. June asked Wright to come speak to prepare students to read Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, he was able to inform them on background knowledge of the area.

“One of my students, seemed like an old pro at everything Afghanistan,” June said. “He told me that his father had served there, and offered up his dad on a plate and said he would love to come in and talk about his experiences.”

Wright served three deployments for the United States Army, two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. While serving 12 months in Afghanistan, Wright was a project manager, overseeing the buildings of schools and a fuel farm. Wright noted some similarities between the Afghan experience he had and the experiences written in Kite Runner.

“The terrain was very similar, and some of the old villages were too,” Wright said.

Both Wright and June hoped students would benefit from hearing of Wright’s experiences.

“Mr. Wright left my students with a powerful message. While he was in Afghanistan, he interacted with the local population on a daily basis, and he came back with a renewed sense of compassion for his fellow man,” June said. “Most of my students have lived on the Outer Banks all their lives. Unless they are fortunate to have traveled with family, they are limited in terms of their interaction with different cultures. Mr. Wright taught them that even lives separated by oceans are in the end all rooted in humanity.”

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