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High school senior Karsten Ingalls of Rineyville says at the end of last school year his homeschool group came upon the American Battle Monuments Foundation’s Past is Prologue Essay Contest.
“It was a World War II essay either about the Battle of Midway or the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Ingalls said. “It was around 1800 words, I believe, and I looked into entering it and it worked out, so I entered for the Battle of Midway.”
The ABMF, which is a “non-profit that supports the federal agency responsible for all 26 American military cemeteries and 31 monuments overseas”, says more than 800 students submitted for the contest, so when he got the phone call telling him he had won the 16 to 18 year-old age group and the $10,000 prize that comes with it, Ingalls says it was a good day.
“When I first heard about the essay, it was $10,000, and I was kind of like ‘ooh, that’s a crazy amount of money,’” Ingalls said. “So I was like ‘I can’t be expecting anything. I’ll just submit it. It’s just school, so I’ll submit it and then forget about it because I don’t want to get my expectations up.’ So I did, and about two and a half months later, they called me up and caught me completely off guard, and it was just a really, really fun surprise.”
Ingalls has previously received recognition for his writing. Hardin County Clerk Brian D. Smith in April named Ingalls a Hardin County Election Ambassador after he won the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Statewide Essay Contest for the third time.
Ingalls says history and government are important topics, and writing on and researching the Battle of Midway gave him a deeper appreciation for what is considered a turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
“The torpedo squadrons, there were about three torpedo squadrons who were almost completely destroyed, and because of their sacrifices, we won that battle, and because of that battle, we won the war, and it was just really cool, just researching that and learning about it, and it was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had in writing an essay,” Ingalls said.
Ingalls says he hopes to study political economy in college and hopefully go onto law school.
You can find Ingalls’s essay, along with more information on the American Battle Monuments Foundation, by visiting www.abmf.org.
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