In 1982, Niskayuna Middle School English teacher Carol LaRow began a pen pal project between her students and United States Navy sailors stationed around the world.  Over 2,500 students participated in the letter-writing project and 21,000 sailors received mail over a nineteen-year period.  Early on, students hand wrote their letters to the sailors.  As the use of technology in the classroom increased, students began composing their letters on the computer and finally, e-mail became the preferred mode of communication.

According to LaRow, “Students wrote about school and life in Niskayuna, New York.  Other topics included family, sports, school clubs, academic subjects, and often, funny stories about their pets.  Most of all, they told the sailors how much they appreciated the jobs they were doing for the country.  The students offered to be good pen pals and asked the sailors to them write back.”

The response was overwhelming.  Sailors wrote back, Navy ship captains sent autographed pictures, photographs of the ships, plaques, hats and tee shirts.  On May 12, 1989, the Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 8 flew a Boeing

Navy SeaKnight helicopter from Norfolk, Virginia to Niskayuna, New York to thank the students for their letters.  The helicopter landed on the soccer field at the school.  Also in 1989, students traveled to Boston to spend the night on board the U.S.S Biddle, a guided missile cruiser.

In January 1990, during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the students and Mrs. LaRow managed to send over 2,000 boxes of Freihofer chocolate chip cookies (donated by Freihofer Baking Co.) to the sailors on six ships deployed to the Persian Gulf.  This project was affectionately named, “The Great Cookie Caper.”

To thank the students for all of their heartfelt efforts, the captain and eleven sailors from the U.S.S. Albany, a nuclear submarine, visited the school.  In preparation for their visit, the students made banners, posters, and cookies.  The sailors showed slides of the submarine and explained how a nuclear reactor worked.

Mrs. LaRow and her students were given a number of special awards for their work.  In 2001 Steven P. Jobs, President of Apple Computer, Inc., nominated Mrs. LaRow and her students for the Smithsonian Laureate Award for the use of technology in the classroom.  Mrs. LaRow was also named News Channel 13’s “Teacher of the Week” and an Apple Distinguished Educator.