[lbo-talk] kids re-enact Grenada invasion

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Aug 21 07:46:11 PDT 2010


Wall Street Journal - August 21, 2010

At Reagan's Presidential Library, the Kids Are in Control They Try to Learn From History by Repeating It; No Eating Jelly Beans, 'You'll Break a Tooth' By TAMARA AUDI

SIMI VALLEY, Calif.—Locked in a war room with military officials shouting at each other about the impending invasion of Grenada, Gen. John Vessey, President Ronald Reagan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rose from his chair.

"People! People!" he shouted. "Gen. Vessey has a request: I am super thirsty."

His military commanders rolled their eyes and resumed the debate. Gen. Vessey—who outside this room was 13-year-old Christian Graves—slumped in his swivel chair, sighing deeply. He then ordered Army Rangers into Grenada.

In a corner of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, beyond stately White House portraits and a sizable chunk of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan's legacy is playing out in an unexpected way.

On multimillion dollar sets replicating the Reagan White House, children play the parts of key officials and reporters to reenact the invasion of Grenada. The U.S. invaded the Caribbean island nation in 1983, fearing a communist takeover after a coup.

Making a 27-year-old invasion relevant for today's children isn't always easy. Kids have to be told what communists are, and why Grenada becoming a communist country would have been a big deal.

The reenactments are part history lesson, part interactive game. The kids decide whether or not to invade, how to carry out an invasion, even how to deal with media leaks.

When kid commanders in the war room were interrupted by news that the press had broken the story of their planned invasion, 12-year-old Meena Khalaf—playing the late Adm. Wesley McDonald, who commanded the invasion—yelled, "Oh, snap!"

Take a tour of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, an interactive experience where kids take on the rolls of key figures in the Reagan administration. WSJ's Tammy Audi reports.

As the country nears the 100th anniversary of Mr. Reagan's birth on Feb. 6, 2011, schools and libraries, groups and towns with any connection to the late president are searching for ways to capture a piece of his legacy.

Mr. Reagan left office in 1989, and died in 2004 at age 93 after a long absence from public life as he struggled with Alzheimer's disease. But the Reagan name lives on.

In the past eight months, the Reagan Foundation has raised more than $40 million that will be used in part for a major upgrade of the museum. Some of this money is being used to introduce Mr. Reagan to a generation who knows little of the 40th president beyond his love of jelly beans.

There are a handful of presidential libraries around the country that feature interactive programs, but, in keeping with Mr. Reagan's first career as an actor, the Reagan Library appears to have the most elaborate stage sets.

The Harry S. Truman Library has a nine-year-old program in which students ponder decisions like dropping the atomic bomb or integrating the military. The Eisenhower Library and Museum allows high-school students and adults to reenact the D-Day invasion.

Some 43,000 children have gone through the Reagan program—without major damage to the creamy white couches in the faux Oval Office, the equipment in the White House press room, the military command center or Air Force One. The replicas are built to three-quarters the size of the originals, and decorated as they were in 1983. The mock Oval Office has pictures of Mr. Reagan and Nancy Reagan on their wedding day, replicas of Mr. Reagan's favorite horse sculptures and jars of jelly beans.

On a recent weekday, 44 children from a local Boys & Girls Club arrived. They were first "briefed" by Leslie Hayden, a teacher at the Reagan museum. Ms. Hayden pointed to a 1983 map of the world, with Communist countries colored red and Democratic countries in blue.

Ms. Hayden talked about the prospect of Grenada "turning red," and the threat from Cuba. "Does anyone know who Che Guevara was?" he asked.

A girl piped up, "I have a shirt with his picture on it!"

"That's cool," Ms. Hayden said, and moved on to a game of "Operation Urgent Fury," the code name for the actual Grenada invasion.

The Boys & Girls Club children were assigned roles, and given official name tags and briefing cards with character backgrounds. They were split into three groups—military, Oval Office and press corps. When the door opened to reveal the plush, realistic Oval Office, President Reagan, played by 11-year-old Bryceson Ayalla, gasped, "Whoaaaa."

Soon enough, young Mr. Ayalla was weighed down with the burden of his office. For one thing, the jelly beans were off limits. "They're two years old. You'll break a tooth," a teacher warned.

As Mr. Ayalla swung his legs from the president's desk, an actor playing General Norman Schwarzkopf appeared on a screen saying the president had a few minutes to decide on a military evacuation of Americans in Grenada.

His advisers were split. Chief of Staff James Baker, 11-year-old Allegra Fallucca-Ruiz, wanted discussions with the Grenada government.

Mr. Ayalla, a leader of few words, said, "Evacuation."

The script for the program was written by Hollywood screenwriter Micah Fitzerman-Blue, who was a year old when the invasion occurred. "I grew up in a pretty left-wing family," he said. "Mention of Reagan around the dinner table was never positive."

Still, he said, his family was pleased when they heard he was hired to write the Reagan script in 2007, his first writing job out of college. "They were just happy I was employed," he said.

The Reagan library wants to start running the game for older children, but that could be trickier. In trial runs with high-school students, some teens rejected the two choices the kids are given—military action or discussion—and demanded alternate options.

"They'd say 'I don't want to do option A or B," said Alissa Whiteley, the program's manager. "What about Option C?"



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