On April 30th, 2026, retired Farmington High School (FHS) math teacher and Vietnam-era military veteran Bob Thomas was invited by American Literature teacher, Kaitlin McIntyre, to present to her three classes about the book they’re reading. Throughout the course of their unit this semester, students were tasked with reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which is a Vietnam War novel from the perspective of an American soldier that touches on the literal and metaphorical things soldiers carry at war.
Thomas was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City. He graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in June, 1969, and reported to the United States Military Academy at West Point on July, 2nd of that year. Graduating from West Point as a lieutenant in 1973, Thomas spent the next 28 years on active duty with the Army as an Armor Officer, ultimately retiring in June of 2001. In that same year, Thomas began teaching at FHS, and was also the advisor for the National Honor Society (NHS) and Military History Club.
“I am very proud of my service to my country,” said Thomas when asked about his time at war. “I have been stationed all across the globe and experienced many different cultures in Europe and Asia. My firm belief is that there is no better country in the world than our own USA.”
Since retirement from FHS in 2017, Thomas is still living an active life, spending time with his three children and three grandchildren. He is the commander of the American Legion Post in Wolcott, and a member of an organization called the United States Army Brotherhood of Tankers (USABOT), which is a national organization of former tankers and mechanics. USABOT’s mission is to preserve and publicize the history of the US Army Armored Forces. Additionally, he is also a member of the Knights of Columbus, and is on the board of Directors and Chairman of the Scholarship Committee. The main goal of Thomas’ presentation was to put The Things They Carried into perspective for students.
“O’Brien goes into great detail about the equipment, training, and operations of the soldiers, but it’s hard to comprehend a lot of what he talks about in the book without being able to experience it. By bringing all of the equipment that they carried, I hope that the students got a better understanding of what it feels like to carry and wear what the soldiers wore and the food they ate,” stated Thomas.
What set Thomas’ demonstration apart from regular guest-speaker presentations was its interactive nature. He had students model the equipment for their classmates, pass around items, and told his own war stories. Junior Liz Zhestkova had the opportunity to wear a military vest, helmet, and carry an emptied grenade.
Zhestkova commented that the experience helped her “see the strength of the men in Vietnam. […] The weight of the bags being around 45 pounds and weighing up to my own body weight of 120 pounds puts a perspective of how strong these men were. They had to keep pictures of their family and loved ones in their helmets because they couldn’t see them.”
While the primary goal of the presentation was to help students understand a soldier’s experience, the impact of cross-generational interactions like these bring humanity back into the history and literature that we sometimes overlook. Other students, like junior Kostas Rakevicius, were surprised at how the presentation opened his eyes to a new perspective.
“His camp stories of the barracks made me think about the down time that the soldiers would experience, and how that influenced their conduct towards civilians after the war. Despite all the crap they received, they still continued to march forward and work for their families and themselves, simply because they wanted a better life. To me, this strikes of the experience immigrants face on a daily basis, and made me think about how Americans share experiences in common more often than [I] previously thought,” stated Rakevicius.
When asked about the impact of intergenerational learning, McIntyre affirmed that presentations like these “adds something that textbooks and even powerful novels can’t replicate — a lived perspective. […] When students engage with an author as storyteller and a human as storyteller, that’s where deeper thinking happens. It’s important to see stories as multifaceted and understand how each story is shaped by the storyteller’s roles, identities, and experiences. […] What is most important is students’ abilities to critically engage with the varied perspectives and come to a more full understanding by examining one moment in history through many lenses.”
