Elementary students help break world record with letters to troops

MADISON COUNTY, Tenn. — Samuel Latham and his friends at East Elementary School are now in the record books.

“We were writing letters to military and Daughters of the American Revolution,” Latham said.

It all started when his second grade teacher, Elise Nelson, asked some of her students to write letters to soldiers.

“My son-in-law is in the service, so that touches my heart, and my children have always been wonderful about doing little assignments,” Nelson said.

Those letters were part of an international effort to break a world record — an organization sending the most letters to military personnel in one month.

“In the end, we smashed the old record of 10,000 letters because we had 100,904 letters from all over the world, including the ones from the students here,” said Jackie Utley with the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Samuel said he and his classmates had no idea they would receive such an honor.

“We were thinking we were just going to send these letters. We didn’t know we were going to set a world record,” Samuel said.

Participants were only allowed to write one letter each.

“One person could only write one letter, so to achieve that you have to get a large group of people together to try to beat that,” Utley said.

DAR says this was an effort to celebrate their 125th anniversary. The letters were counted at the organization’s annual conference in June.

East Elementary students received their certificate, which was shipped all the way from Guinness World Records headquarters in England.