FROM PAGE ONE
A12 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2021
Belles:
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald
Students meet with volunteers to discuss various facets of budgeting during the FAB Life
simulation at Hermiston High School on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.
FAB:
Continued from Page A1
One student decided he was
going to have his teenage
daughter babysit to help
cover rent.
“I’m surprised at seeing
some of them with higher
income already coming to
me,” Spencer said after a
student making $77,643
said she was running out of
money and still had more
booths to visit.
Kaylie Cook, whose sce-
nario sheet said she was
making $65,944 a year as
a single nurse practitioner
with no children, said she
didn’t know how some stu-
dents with lower salaries
were going to make it.
“I make a good amount
of money but I feel like I’m
going to run out by the end
of this,” she said.
Stretching dollars
Cook said one thing she
had learned from the exercise
is that when she is an adult,
she’ll need to budget care-
fully so she doesn’t run out
of money before she is fi n-
ished paying all her bills for
the month.
Giselle Gutierrez and
Jose Cortez, who were wait-
ing together in line for the
housing booth, were mak-
ing much less than Cook —
about $34,000 and $32,000
respectively. When asked
what had been the biggest
surprise so far, Gutierrez
said it was the cost of health
insurance.
“I got lucky with insur-
ance, because mine is com-
pany sponsored, so it’s
cheaper,” Cortez chimed in.
Gutierrez said the exer-
cise was making her feel bad
for her parents, and all the
budgeting choices they have
to make.
“My husband doesn’t
even work!” she exclaimed,
looking at her scenario sheet.
“What is he doing?”
Liz Marvin, a counselor at
Hermiston High School, said
she was glad the high school
was able to bring back FAB
Life for a second year, despite
the pandemic. In 15 years of
providing educational oppor-
tunities for students at the
school, she said, “this is the
highest student engagement
of anything we’ve done.”
The kit with scenario
sheets for students and price
sheets for the volunteers was
provided by ECMC Group, a
student loan guaranty agency
that also teaches fi nancial
literacy. It also came with
other simulation pieces, such
as “crystal ball” cards that
teachers walk around and
hand students.
“Those are the random
things in life — Grandma
sent $50 for your birthday,
your car broke down,” Mar-
vin said.
She said many students
expressed that they hadn’t
realized how many expenses
they would have each month
once they moved out on their
own. The goal of the exer-
cise was for students to cre-
ate a balanced budget on
their own, but if they needed
help, they could turn to an
“SOS” advisor to take a look
and walk them through some
suggestions of where they
might cut some expenses.
“In the fi rst group there
was a couple whose sheets
said they were both single,
and they said, ‘Can we get
married?’ and I said sure, and
they split their expenses,”
Marvin said.
She said the high school
couldn’t have done the FAB
Life exercise this year with-
out the support from the
Hermiston Chamber of Com-
merce and the Hermiston
Walmart Distribution Cen-
ter, which provided most of
the volunteers for the booths
and prizes — including two
television sets — for students
to enter a drawing after com-
pleting their scenario.
his nationally syndicated radio program,
“The Osgood File.”
Continued from Page A1
People who heard the broadcast began
to wonder if that was what happened to
“It was pretty devastating to her to lose their relative, and slowly an unoffi cial
her big brother,” Sutton said, noting she database of survivors and victims began
was just 12 when he died.
to take shape. In October 2000, Congress
She didn’t talk about it much, he said. It passed a resolution publicly acknowledg-
ing the sinking of the HMS Rohna. The res-
was too painful.
After his mother’s death, Sutton discov- olution stated that the men who died on the
Rohna had been “largely forgot-
ered that Belles was not on the
ten by the Nation” and acknowl-
Liscome Bay, but on the Rohna, a
edged that “many families still
transport ship that was part of a
do not know the circumstances
convoy moving Allied troops off
of the deaths of loved ones who
the coast of northern Africa.
died as a result of the attack.”
According to an account by
Sutton said after he found out,
the Naval History and Heritage
it was strange to realize his uncle
Command, Germans attacked
had been killed by Nazis and
the convoy on November 25,
not Japanese soldiers as he had
1943, and again the next day,
grown up believing.
using new Hs-293 radio-con-
He is trying to keep Ker-
trolled, rocket boosted glide Kermit Belles
mit Belles’ memory alive, and
bombs. Forty-one of them
recently submitted information
missed their mark, thwarted
about Belles to fi lmmaker Jack
by smoke, radio jamming and
Ballo, who has teamed up with
extensive anti-aircraft fi re. But
historian Michael Walsh to cre-
one was a direct hit.
ate the documentary “Rhona:
“The bomb hit Rohna’s port
Classifi ed.”
side, penetrated deep into the ship
In the documentary’s trailer,
on delayed-fuse, and blew holes
one woman says she never knew
in the starboard side, quickly
her husband was a survivor until
causing the ship to list to star-
he started crying one day while
board,” the account states.
watching a scene in a television
Most lifeboats were destroyed
or trapped under debris. Others made it show where a ship was sinking.
“He told me the whole story, and told
into the water but were quickly swamped
by troops and sunk. As neighboring ships me that I could not repeat it,” she said.
Sutton said Kermit was one of 10 chil-
attempted to rescue soldiers hanging on
to debris on rough seas in the dark, some dren in the Belles family, four of whom
were sucked under ships or were unable to fought in World War II. Ken was a para-
survive the exposure for the hours it took trooper who jumped into Normandy and
was awarded a Purple Heart. Tony served
to be rescued.
Altogether, by the U.S. government’s in the Army in the Philippines. And Bob
count, 1,050 U.S. soldiers and more than was in the Navy Seabees.
Sutton, a Marine Corps veteran, said
100 Allied troops from other countries
were killed in the sinking or died from after seeing his daughter deployed to the
their wounds afterward. The exact number Middle East, he said he can’t imagine what
of survivors is unknown, but thought to be his grandparents went through.
“Imagine having four of your sons in
somewhere between 900 and 1,000.
Not wanting the Germans to know that World War II, not knowing if they’ll come
their new radio-guided missile technology back, and getting that telegram,” he said.
The Belles family had moved from
had worked, the Army classifi ed the entire
event indefi nitely, ordering survivors and Washington to a home on Diagonal Road
rescuers to stay quiet under threat of court in Hermiston in 1941, but Kermit’s regis-
martial. Gold Star families like the Belles tration card says he enlisted at age 18 in
were simply told their loved one was miss- Timentwa, Washington. Sutton said it is
unclear why Kermit enlisted there instead
ing in action.
According to the Rohna Survivors of in Hermiston, and none of Kermit’s sib-
Memorial Association, a few survivors lings are alive to ask.
He wants people to know what parts
began to start sharing the story of the
Rohna with their local newspapers in of Kermit Belles’ story he does know,
the early 1990s. It gained wider public however.
“It’s nice to remember these guys,” he
attention in 1993, when CBS commen-
tator Charles Osgood shared the story on said. “They paid a big price.”
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