Essay

LEWISTON, Idaho -- Danny Blake didn't know what he was going to write until he was already writing.

Sometime in November, the 13-year-old was assigned to pen an essay on what patriotism meant to him for his seventh-grade geography class at Jenifer Junior High School in Lewiston. His teacher had mentioned it would be entered into the Fleet Reserve Association's essay contest, but to Blake, it was just an assignment that he wanted to get a good grade on.

He started by looking up the definition of the word in the dictionary. Three paragraphs and a few months later, he had earned $3,100 in U.S. savings bonds.