Sep 12, 2018 5 min read

While many of her classmates were taking it easy for summer vacation, Peters Township High School senior Alaina Nypaver was delivering a eulogy.

It was for a man she’d never met, one who died more than half a century before she was born. And she spoke about him nearly 4,000 miles from the home he once had.

Alaina was just one of 15 students selected nationally for a program that took them to the northern coast of France and the sites associated with history’s largest seaborne invasion, the Allied operation at the height of World War II known as D-Day.

The program, Normandy: Sacrifice for Freedom Albert H. Small Student and Teacher Institute, provided her and middle school social studies teacher Josh Elder with the opportunity to visit the five beaches where troops representing three nations landed on June 6, 1944, to launch the offensive that eventually liberated France from Nazi Germany.

The most widely recognizable of the beaches is the American landing point at Omaha, in no small part because of its grisly representation in the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.” Omaha also is where Coxswain Amin Isbir of the U.S. Navy landed during the invasion, and where he died the same day.

Seventy-four years later, Alaina spoke about the McKeesport native near the white cross that marks his grave in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, with her eulogy based on research she and her teacher compiled to comply with the institute’s requirement for each participant to report on a Silent Hero – the institute has trademarked the term – who is buried there.

Alaina said she chose Coxswain Isbir because of his hometown’s proximity to hers. And even after the research, some details about his life are vague, including his age at the time of his death.

“We think he was 36,” Elders said. “We found a couple of different dates of birth.”

That would have made the son of Syrian immigrants the oldest member of his D-Day platoon, and no doubt the man who had served longest in the military.

“He actually joined the Navy Reserves in 1933, so he had been in the Navy for over a decade,” Alaina reported. “He worked on steel boats as a fireman, so that’s why we think he went into the Navy.”

As obscure as Isbir may seem, he was a posthumous recipient of the French Croix de Guerre for bravery, and his name has turned up in some relatively high-profile instances.

For example, Isbir’s platoon was led by the late Joseph Vaghi, who appears in the Ken Burns series “The War” as the last surviving Navy beachmaster who directed troops landing at the Normandy beaches on D-Day. In a videotaped interview for the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, Vaghi recalled his coxswain as the platoon’s only fatality during the invasion.

“The Germans were shelling from long distance,” Vaghi told his interviewer, “and at one point a big shell hit us and blew a Jeep up in the air. And when it came down, it hit one of my men, Amin Isbir.”

Because his body wasn’t recovered until June 8, that was the date listed on his grave marker. A few years ago, his grandnephew, Eric Montgomery, successfully lobbied for the engraving to be changed to two days earlier, a correction that made national news.

While Alaina’s eulogy for Isbir marked the culminating event of her trip, she came away from Normandy with a better overall understanding of what occurred on D-Day, and visits to the beaches involved demonstrated why the Allies suffered so many casualties: at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.

“They made sure we went at low tide, so we could actually see how long they had to run,” she said about the troops on the beaches who were trying to avoid Germany artillery fire from the bluffs above.

“And even though I was prepped and told, ‘It’s going to be bigger than you think it’s going to be,’ no amount of preparation can give you the real experience,” she explained. “Each beach took my breath away, especially Omaha Beach. It’s amazing how many men made it, seeing how far they had to run.”

Alaina said she has a long-running interest in history, particularly World War II, dating back to when Elders taught her – he coached her volleyball team, too – when she was in eighth grade. As the school’s National History Day sponsor, he encouraged her to complete a project for the nonprofit organization’s annual contest.

She qualified for the national competition that first year and has been participating ever since, and another of the affiliated Normandy program’s requirements is that she does it again in 2018-19. Also, she must give at least two presentations about her experiences to groups in the community.

Public speaking won’t be a problem.

“I was actually a quiet student, but National History Day brought me out of my shell,” Alaina explained.

Delivering a eulogy for a World War II hero didn’t hurt, either.