Christmas play honors soldiers

Mt. Mitchell United Methodist Church will present “A Soldier’s Christmas: The Quest for Peace on Earth,” an original play based on the poem, “The Soldier’s Christmas,” author unknown.

The play will be 6 p.m. Dec. 16.

Organizers hope the second showing will receive the same response as when it was originally performed in 2010. At that performance, the audience was standing room only.

The play was started when Nancy LeQuire received the poem “A Soldier’s Christmas” in the mail from the Disabled American Veterans. She suggested to her husband, Jerry LeQuire, that he read the poem before or after the church’s Christmas program.

When Jerry presented the idea to the church education chair, the couple was encouraged to make it into a program. The LeQuires met with other church members and the planning committee to brainstorm ideas which Nancy organized into a script.

The play begins with a visit to a United States church celebrating Christmas during wartime, illustrating the freedoms that were being enjoyed. A recognition of veterans in the audience will include the hand bell choir playing “Let There be Peace on Earth” followed by the entrance of prisoners of war and war sounds filling the church.

Church member Hedi Webb will tell of her experiences in Germany during World War II. Webb survived the Aug.14, 1943, bombing of the ball bearing plant in Schweinfurt when she was 5 years old and says she remembers, “They were flying so low that I could see the men that were shooting at us from inside the planes.”

In the final scene, Santa, played by Ronnie Newsome, visits an American soldier, played by Emmett Langley, in a disheveled one-bedroom house in a war-torn country. Santa marvels at the commitment of the soldier to protect his country and fighting for freedoms. A German soldier, played by Gerhard Wolf, is stalking in the shadows until he lays down his gun with a moving act of peace to end the performance.

Mt. Mitchell United Methodist Church is at 6001 Old Salisbury-Concord Road, Kannapolis.