HHS Students Feel Impact of Malaysian Airlines Downing

From left are Hans Gieskes, honorary consul for the Netherlands; Ryan Dekeon, head delegate for Model UN; teacher Zachary N. Simmons, Model UN adviser; Andrew Morphill, Model UN delegate; Alejandro Lopez, head delegate for HillieMUN (the upcoming Middle School Model UN at HHS); and Rashaun Martin, district curriculum supervisor for Social Studies/History and Foreign Languages.

Photo: From left are Hans Gieskes, honorary consul for the Netherlands; Ryan Dekeon, head delegate for Model UN; teacher Zachary N. Simmons, Model UN adviser; Andrew Morphill, Model UN delegate; Alejandro Lopez, head delegate for HillieMUN (the upcoming Middle School Model UN at HHS); and Rashaun Martin, district curriculum supervisor for Social Studies/History and Foreign Languages.

The Haverhill school community, especially Haverhill High School and its Model United Nations team, are feeling an especially close connection to the Dutch people today.

During the last school year, Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator Rashawn Martin, teacher Zachary Simmons and student members of the HHS Model UN team shared an afternoon with an envoy of the Dutch people.

Hans Gieskes, the honorary consul to the Dutch Embassy in Boston, visited Haverhill High School in February. Simmons invited Gieskes to give members of the Model UN team, which would represent the Kingdom of the Netherlands at a national Model UN in New York City a month later, some first-hand information to use in the competition.

Fast-forward to July 17. A Malaysian Airlines 777 leaves Amsterdam bound for Kuala Lumpur with 298 aboard. It was shot down over southern Ukraine.

“As it happens, I arrived in Amsterdam on a short flight from London a few hours after the MH17 tragedy happened and it has impacted our small country in a big way,” Gieskes wrote to a Haverhill school department employee this week.

Among the 298 people on board the plane, 193 were Dutch nationals. All aboard were killed.

Among the anecdotes that Gieskes shared the day he visited Haverhill were examples of the closeness and interconnectedness of the Dutch people. Those relationships have been evident in the days after the crash, Gieskes said.

“(With almost) 200 Dutch victims, multiplied by seven degrees of separation, and it almost touches every citizen in a meaningful way.”

The prime minister of the Netherlands declared July 23 a national Day of Mourning as the bodies of victims of the MH17 disaster began to arrive in that country.