Veterans Day: A Time to Mourn, a Time to Heal : Cadets at an Anaheim military academy honor veterans with a special Mass and lunch. And the students are rewarded for their achievements.

After listening to a Navy veteran explain during a Veterans Day lunch that his pin signified he had been a submarine diver, Eric Rios pointed to a bar on his own uniform.

“This one is for doing my homework,” Rios said.

It will be years before Rios, 12, is eligible for medals for bravery in combat, but Rios and his fellow students at St. Catherine’s Military School are recognized for achievements ranging from academic excellence to getting themselves dressed in the morning.

On Friday, approximately 160 uniformed students honored area veterans with a special Mass and lunch. The Veterans Day event was followed by a formal presentation at which students received bars and certificates.

It was difficult to tell who was more impressed with whom.

Veterans from all branches of the armed services watched as 7- to 12-year-old cadets gathered in ranks after Mass. They nodded as student officers called out familiar orders and responses: “Sir, Charlie Battalion present and accounted for, sir.”

“These boys are sharp,” said Steven C. Vargas, the former submarine diver. “During my time in the Navy in the 1980s, we didn’t always get treated so well. It’s a real honor to be here with kids who look up to members of the armed forces.”

The cadets, in turn, flocked around the several active-duty soldiers who attended in uniform.

“Have you gotten a Purple Heart yet?” one boy asked Andras M. Marton, a first lieutenant in the National Guard.

Marton graduated from St. Catherine’s in 1985. When he started as a first-grader at the school, Marton said, he was overwhelmed by the military atmosphere at first, but grew to love the structure and discipline.

“I remember this school as a tremendous opportunity to get an education that combined Catholic values and a military environment,” Marton said. “My family upbringing was always to do what’s best and do what’s right. St. Catherine’s reinforced that.”

St. Catherine’s was started as a girls school in 1889 by the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose. Five years later it was switched to an all-boys orphanage, and in the 1920s it became a military boys school.

“The sisters felt the boys needed a male influence so they invited the military to establish a presence here,” said Chris Ragon, director of development and alumni affairs.

Richard Horn, a 1968 graduate and parent of a seventh-grader at St. Catherine’s, said the military presence is what makes the school different from other Catholic or private schools.

“The schooling I got here helped me when I first joined the service,” the Army veteran said. “I had a real advantage over the other recruits because I knew how to march and had some military training, so I was put right into a leadership position in boot camp. This school teaches military leadership that helps students whether they go into the service or not.”