National Guard entertains Nome students with Holiday Music

Christmas came early to Nome Schools, in the last week of November, thanks to a concert put on by the National Guard.

During the week, in the school day, all classes in Nome Preschool, Nome Elementary School and Nome Beltz Middle/High School were ushered into an assembly. After settling down on the bleachers, students got to hear five members of the 11th Airborne Division, from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, in Anchorage, play a mini Christmas concert.

The concert featured two military service members on trumpets, two on trombones, and one playing the bells, for an extra festive flourish. Several more military members stood by to coordinate and to take pictures.

The band played favorite carols such as “Jingle Bells”, “Frosty the Snowman”, and “Feliz Navidad”, while encouraging kids to sing along and fill the room with Christmas cheer.

“We picked what we thought would be the best holiday tunes that the kids would recognize and sing along to,” says Staff Sergeant Ashton R Milliken of the 11th Airborne Division, “It was pretty special to hear so many kids join along and to see so many smiling faces.”

Milliken said the concerts were a pretty big endeavor, involving National Guard military personnel both in Nome and out of it. This concert, according to Milliken isn’t the first National Guard Christmas concert to occur in Nome. “After the success of last year’s operation, we were approached by the National Guard to support again,” Milliken says of this year’s concerts. “We wanted to maximize our outreach efforts while there, so I reached out to the schools to see if there would be interest.”

The outcome was a cheery brassy Christmas concert which put a smile on the faces of students all over Nome. Milliken said that, in the past, the National Guard has also performed in outlying villages, spreading the Christmas cheer all over the Norton Sound region.