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BBC News
06-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Thousands of poppies on display at Tower of London for VE Day
Poppies pour across Tower of London to mark VE Day 10 minutes ago Share Save Maia Davies BBC News Share Save Reuters Poppies are a symbol of remembrance in the UK Nearly 30,000 ceramic poppies are on display at the Tower of London to mark 80 years since the end of World War Two in Europe. The red poppies have been positioned to resemble a cascading "wound" at the heart of the Norman fortress, which was bombed during the Blitz. Some of the flowers were first shown at the site in 2014, when an installation of 888,246 poppies - each representing a military life lost during World War One - drew more than five million visitors. The new artwork, named The Tower Remembers, is designed to reflect the loss of life through war and provide a space for remembrance. It was designed by Tom Piper, while the ceramic flowers were made and designed by the artist Paul Cummins. Piper previously said the scale of the 2014 installation, named Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, could never be repeated, but that he came to learn "smaller installations could still carry great emotional power". He added: "Everywhere these poppies have been, they have brought people together, with their own stories of sacrifice, commemoration, and hope for the future. "They have much to say about the universality of war and the anguish of suffering and loss." Getty Images The poppies are on loan from the Imperial War Museums' collection Visitors will be able to see the poppies as part of a general admission ticket to the Tower of London, though a small part will be visible from the public footpath. The display will remain until Armistice Day on 11 November, which marks when the World War One armistice came into effect. A tradition with its roots in World War One, poppies are a symbol of remembrance in the UK and are worn to commemorate those who lost their lives in two world wars and other conflicts. Getty Images Part of the display will be visible from the public footpath
The Irish Sun
04-05-2025
- General
- The Irish Sun
Spectacular power of poppies at the Tower as 30,000 flowers form poignant new memorial to mark VE Day's 80th anniversary
BATTERED yet unbowed, the Tower of London became a symbol of resistance and fortitude as the Nazi Blitz raged. Now this citadel — entwined for a millennium in the British national story — has been bedecked with 30,000 blood-red poppies as a stark and moving memorial to mark VE Day. 6 Beefeater Andy Shedden at the poignant display in the Tower of London Credit: Louis Wood 6 A worker installs the display Credit: Richard Pohle 6 Creator Paul Cummins suffered severe injuries when his hand was crushed in an industrial roller used to make the poppies Credit: Getty Standing amid the ceramic blooms, Beefeater and ex serviceman Andy Shedden, 57, told me: 'It's poignant because the Tower community suffered during World War Two. 'That conflict is still in living memory so this poppy memorial is the right thing to do to honour so much sacrifice.' The yeoman warder who served with 3 Royal Horse Artillery gestures around the historic compound to where Luftwaffe bombs fell. 'The North Bastion was hit and so was the Old Hospital Block just over there,' he explained. Read More on UK News The Tower — close to the East End docks and warehouses lining the Thames — was an obvious landmark for German bombing crews when cloud cover was low. On October 4, 1940, the massive stone North Bastion took a direct hit. One of Andy's Also killed in the aerial bombardment that night was Lily Frances Lunn, 70, who lived in the Tower complex with her family. Most read in The Sun After another bombing raid on December 8 of that year, Chief Warder A H Cook said: 'By dawn our poor old Tower looked in a pitiful plight, for hardly a portion of it had escaped the fury of the night. 'Most of its windows had been blown out or were hanging awry. VE Day was a 'jolly' moment but work went on, 100-year-old former Wren says 'Glass was strewn everywhere. 'Display is attempt to say recovery is ahead' 'Doors were off their hinges, ceilings down, and blackout curtains torn to ribbons.' Bombs landed a few feet away, but the white stone edifice, where Minette Butler, assistant curator at Historic Royal Palaces, said: 'When you look at the number of bombs that landed here, it really is incredible the White Tower in particular wasn't hit.' The new poppy display uses blooms from Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red — the art installation that filled the Tower's moat with a sea of crimson in 2014. The display used 888,246 ceramic flowers representing every UK fatality in the When you look at the number of bombs that landed here, it really is incredible the White Tower in particular wasn't hit Minette Butler Artist Paul Cummins — who came up with the concept — lost his middle finger and the use of his index finger of his right hand after it was crushed in an industrial roller used to make the poppies. The 47-year-old said: 'I live with it and I move on. I believe the poppy project helped me get over doing what I did to my hand, because I didn't have to think about it.' Timed to mark the centenary of the start of that conflict, it soon became a site of remembrance visited by more than five million people. Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Prince William, Prince Harry and Princess Catherine were among those who came to see the memorial. After four months, most of the poppies were sold at £25 each to raise money for military charities, but thousands were taken on tour around the country and then kept at the Imperial War Museum. Now they have returned to mark They then cascade from the White Tower — like blood flowing from a wound — before rippling through the castle complex and out into the Thames at Traitors' Gate. Close by, sleek-black in their aviary, are the Tower's seven ravens who are being kept in pens while work on the installation was finished. It is said that the kingdom and the Tower itself will fall if ravens ever leave the castle. Walkways have been made between the red flowers so that the birds, including one called Poppy, can shuffle among them. Tower Governor, Brigadier Andrew Jackson, 60, told me: 'VE Day's 80th is such a big anniversary. 'It's one of the last occasions we're going to be able to celebrate the greatest generation alongside those who were actually part of the war, whether on the home front or deployed overseas.' 6 The new poppy display uses blooms from Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red — the art installation that filled the Tower's moat with a sea of crimson in 2014 Credit: Louis Wood 6 Cindy Sheehan said: 'Each poppy is individually made, which represents an individual loss of life to me. It's a beautiful and very moving sight' Credit: Louis Wood 6 The wrecked North Bastion after it was hit by a bomb in 1940 Credit: Historic Royal Palaces/Yeoman Warder Archive The Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, who served with the amalgamated Royal Yorkshire Regiment, said that the display was not just one of remembrance but also resilience. Brigadier Jackson added: 'The Tower of London has stood for a thousand years. It's witnessed wars, plagues, floods and fire. 'And it was wounded itself during the Second World War. So the poppy display is attempting to say that although you can be wounded, there is recovery ahead of you.' At the outbreak of the war in 1939, While historic items from British history normally kept in the White Tower, including The now-vacant galleries were used by troops as a sports room and concert hall, with an air raid shelter in the basement. The tower was also used to interrogate prisoners of war. The most high-profile was Rudolf Hess, deputy Fuhrer of 'Doomed mission to negotiate peace' In 1941 He was held at King's House at the Tower where many prisoners had been interrogated — including In August of that year, German spy Josef Jakobs became The agent had parachuted into a field in Ramsey, Cambs, in January 1941 but broke his ankle on landing. Soon apprehended by the local Home Guard, he was found to be carrying £500, forged identity papers and a radio transmitter. Found guilty of espionage, he was taken to the rifle range at the Tower where he was blindfolded and tied to a brown Windsor chair. Following a silent signal from an officer, eight Scots Guards fired their rifles in unison at a matchbox-sized white cotton target pinned over Jacob's heart. The spy died instantly and the chair he was sitting in remains on display at the White Tower. VE Day's 80th is such a big anniversary. It's one of the last occasions we're going to be able to celebrate the greatest generation alongside those who were actually part of the war, whether on the home front or deployed overseas Tower Governor, Brigadier Andrew Jackson The London fortress also did its bit by joining the wartime government's Dig for Victory campaign to grow fruit and vegetables. Its moat was dug up and turned into allotments which were tended by Beefeaters and others living at the castle. When Nazi Germany finally signed an unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945, the UK had lost nearly 384,000 military personnel and over 67,000 civilians. Victory in Europe — or VE Day — was declared the next day, and the Tower, still scarred from bomb damage, was illuminated with floodlights to mark the occasion. Just down the road, London's East End celebrated with a week of raucous street parties. Yet the memory of those who had lost their lives in the fighting would cast a dark shadow for many families. Each poppy is individually made, which represents an individual loss of life to me. It's a beautiful and very moving sight Cindy Sheehan Now the Tower is once again bringing people together to remember the bravery and the country's resilience. The display opens tomorrow to mark VE Day on Thursday and will remain in place for The poppies will also stay in place until Volunteer Cindy Sheehan, 63, helping arrange the artwork for Historic Royal Palaces, said: 'One veteran asked me to kiss a poppy because of the atrocity he witnessed when a young boy was killed. 'Each poppy is individually made, which represents an individual loss of life to me. 'It's a beautiful and very moving sight.' We cannot let memories fade By LISA NANDY, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary MY grandfather served in World War Two. I grew up captivated by his stories of courage and sacrifice. But for my son's generation, with just a few hundred veterans still with us, the Second World War might feel less like family history and more like distant history. We cannot let their memories fade. These were ordinary people who did extraordinary things – men who fought brutal battles abroad, women who kept our nation running, and children evacuated from their homes as bombs fell on our cities. When peace came, they didn't just rebuild Britain, they transformed it. They created the NHS, rolled out free secondary education, and embraced world-changing technological advances. Through rationing, air raids, separation from loved ones and unimaginable loss, they endured. And when victory came, they built a better Britain. Today, a procession will begin with a young person passing the Commonwealth War Graves Torch for Peace to This torch symbolises our solemn duty to pass on their stories to future generations. In our divided world, the lessons of Their unity in the face of tyranny, their sacrifice for freedom, and their determination to build a fairer society are values we desperately need today. We call them We live in freedom because of what they endured. We enjoy peace because of what they sacrificed. We thrive in prosperity because of what they built. This week, let's
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I lost the use of two fingers making the Tower of London poppies but I don't regret it'
A week after returning from hospital, where his right hand had been painstakingly reconstructed after being crushed in a clay roller, Paul Cummins was back at work – to continue the process of hand-making 888,246 ceramic poppies for a centenary installation at the Tower of London. In total, Cummins estimates he made 23,000 himself, with a team of 300 other workers – some rounded up from his alma mater, the University of Derby, some agency workers – completing the rest. 'I put a bin bag over my hand and went back looking like one of those Chinese lucky cat ornaments,' he says. Luckily, he says, the accident 'killed all the nerves in my hand, so I didn't feel anything. I did lose my middle finger, and I'd lost [use] of my ring finger on that hand, which is locked in a strained position.' This was May 2014, and Cummins, a ceramic artist from Derbyshire, was responsible for creating the poppies – one for each British or Colonial life lost during the First World War – that would be 'planted' in undulating waves in the moat of the Tower of London to mark the centenary of the First World War. For nine months, his workshop was operating 24 hours a day. 'I'm a very compulsive person, and a control freak… I did get a bit miserable,' he says. 'But the people who were working with me, they kept my spirits up.' It was worth it in the end. Cast your mind back to the last days of summer in 2014, and you may remember the enormous impact Cummins's installation at the Tower of London had around the world. It was titled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, and Cummins's ceramic artwork was displayed in an arresting river of red poppies around the Tower by the stage designer Tom Piper. It was visited by the then- Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (now, of course, the Prince and Princess of Wales) and Prince Harry on the day it opened, on August 5, and by the late Queen and Prince Philip in October that year. Over the course of the four months it was on display, more than five million people visited, making it the most talked about – and arguably most successful – public art installation in living memory. Politicians including David Cameron, then Prime Minister, called for it to be extended, but Cummins insisted it was supposed to be transient. Now, however, the poppies are back at the Tower. We are speaking over Zoom and Cummins, aged 47, is in his garden in Derbyshire ahead of the unveiling of a new poppy installation to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day. The poppies are fewer in number – 33,000 compared to the original 888,246 – but they are displayed within the Tower itself (so only visible if you buy a ticket to enter) in a striking 'explosion' of red in front of the iconic White Tower, with a cascade of poppies from its upper left-hand corner. On a bright morning in May, they look as majestic as they did a decade ago, glinting in the sunlight. The poppies on display have been taken out of storage from the Imperial War Museum – Cummins had always insisted that he wouldn't make any more. 'The idea of it being transient was really important, because it [represented] the bodies going back,' he says. 'Each one represents a soldier, his soul, and they go back to where they came from.' The majority of them, in fact, were sold for £25 to raise money for military charities – more on that later – but a number were taken on tour around the country and then maintained within the Imperial War Museum's collection. Within a day or two of Queen Elizabeth's visit to the Tower, every poppy made available to buy had sold out. For Cummins, the poppies entrusted to the Museum represent 'the unnamed soldiers… the bodies that never went back.' Is he worried that, this time round, the installation won't have the same impact? 'It won't… but it doesn't have to,' he says. 'It's a totally different installation on its own.' In some ways, though, it feels 'like an old friend… I'm really excited about it all, and it's all the emotion from last time building up,' he says. 'I love the idea of it being recreated in the way it has. It has a familiarity, a comfort, but it also has… new stories to tell.' Cummins grew up in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, the son of a builder and a healthcare worker. He has one brother, who still lives nearby with his two children – Cummins, who is single and without kids, lives with his mum in the Derbyshire countryside. His father died suddenly 20 years ago from a heart attack at work and he had impressed on his son to take courses that would lead to secure employment. So after Cummins left school, he spent two years at catering college and then trained as an architectural model maker before finally choosing to follow his passion and complete a degree in craft – now called fine art – at the University of Derby's College of Arts. He graduated in 2010 and set up a ceramics studio shortly after. His first big break came two years later, when he was chosen as one of the artists with disabilities – Cummins has severe dyslexia – to produce an installation for a programme called Unlimited, which was commissioned to celebrate disabled artists' work for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. His project, the English Flower Garden, consisted of six flower installations at six famous British residences, including Blenheim Palace and the Althorp estate. When I ask what his father would have made of it all, Cummins says he 'probably would have told me to get a proper job'. He struggled at school, where 'dyslexia wasn't really a thing… I grew up in the Eighties in the north of England,' he says. 'They helped as much as they could and as much as they could understand… I was the kid who 'tried.' That was my report – I 'tried' a lot.' His dyslexia, which was unearthed after he left school, makes reading a challenge. 'I don't read very well at all,' he says. 'I see colours instead of words.' He relies on technology to read out text messages and emails. It has been the dyslexia, however, that turned out to be the making of him. He came up with the idea for Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at his local library – he had been considering a project in honour of the centenary of the First World War and was looking for inspiration. 'I force myself to go and look at things in libraries and attempt to read books,' he says, which he describes as 'one of [his] quirks.' 'I found a document [from someone] who fought in the First World War… and in that document was [the line] 'The blood swept lands and seas of red.' It was phonetically written, so I connected with it. It clicked something in my head, and I went to see how many people had died in the War.' From there, fate stepped in. 'I rang so many people around the country to see if I could do an installation there,' he says. 'Mainly castles, because I needed the space. And then I rang the Tower of London, and my name is the same as someone's friend [the Tower's head of operations knew another Paul Cummins] – and I didn't shut up until they said, 'Ok, come in and pitch the project.' So I did. It was fortuitous – it was meant to happen. And it all fell into place from there – everything unfolded with momentum.' The momentum was so great, in fact, that Cummins had to find hundreds of people to help create the poppies, each of which was hand-stamped from red clay and shaped at his workshop in Derbyshire, or Johnson Tiles in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent. 'I went from employing nobody to 300 people within two months, and that was a bit of a shock,' he says. 'We were open 24/7.' For Cummins, the project came at a significant physical, emotional, and financial cost – he lost the use of two fingers and thousands of pounds. The project was criticised for the percentage of money that ended up going to charity: of the £23 million raised overall, £9.5 million was donated, including a £1.1 million VAT rebate. Most of the rest, however, went in costs, and Cummins says he made a 'modest loss in the thousands'. On the injury, which happened when his clothing got caught in a rolling press, he says: 'I live with it and I move on… I believe doing [the poppy project] helped me get over doing what I did to my hand, because I didn't have to think about it.' He has been left with chronic pain in his right hand and limited use of his fingers, but he has found ways to continue working. 'I have to throw on the potter's wheel slightly differently – I have to use my palm, and things like that. And have a bit more of a rest, because it makes my hand ache,' he says. 'I don't dwell on it. If I dwell on it, I'd overthink it and make things worse.' While the response was largely positive, the installation also drew criticism in some quarters. At the time, one critic called it 'a deeply aestheticised, prettified and toothless war memorial.' One academic said the installation marked 'another wave in the rising tide of British nationalism'. But Cummins believes we should be proud of the poppy and what it represents, now more than ever. 'I didn't read too much of the press for my sanity,' he says. 'But the people who say [the poppy] is nationalist, and so on… I think they're totally wrong. It's a symbol of hope, and a symbol of how beauty can come of great loss.' Nevertheless, the poppies changed his life for the better. He was awarded the MBE in the 2015 New Year Honours, and is currently working on an 'immersive experience' for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera in New York. 'I keep myself to myself, but once people know what I've done, they want to interact with me in a slightly different way, and they want to know more,' he says. 'It all worked out brilliantly. I don't really have any regrets… maybe just losing a finger. I think everything worked out as it was meant to work out. It was fate.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘I lost the use of two fingers making the Tower of London poppies but I don't regret it'
A week after returning from hospital, where his right hand had been painstakingly reconstructed after being crushed in a clay roller, Paul Cummins was back at work – to continue the process of hand-making 888,246 ceramic poppies for a centenary installation at the Tower of London. In total, Cummins estimates he made 23,000 himself, with a team of 300 other workers – some rounded up from his alma mater, the University of Derby, some agency workers – completing the rest. 'I put a bin bag over my hand and went back looking like one of those Chinese lucky cat ornaments,' he says. Luckily, he says, the accident 'killed all the nerves in my hand, so I didn't feel anything. I did lose my middle finger, and I'd lost [use] of my ring finger on that hand, which is locked in a strained position.' This was May 2014, and Cummins, a ceramic artist from Derbyshire, was responsible for creating the poppies – one for each British or Colonial life lost during the First World War – that would be 'planted' in undulating waves in the moat of the Tower of London to mark the centenary of the First World War. For nine months, his workshop was operating 24 hours a day. 'I'm a very compulsive person, and a control freak… I did get a bit miserable,' he says. 'But the people who were working with me, they kept my spirits up.' It was worth it in the end. Cast your mind back to the last days of summer in 2014, and you may remember the enormous impact Cummins's installation at the Tower of London had around the world. It was titled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, and Cummins's ceramic artwork was displayed in an arresting river of red poppies around the Tower by the stage designer Tom Piper. It was visited by the then- Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (now, of course, the Prince and Princess of Wales) and Prince Harry on the day it opened, on August 5, and by the late Queen and Prince Philip in October that year. Over the course of the four months it was on display, more than five million people visited, making it the most talked about – and arguably most successful – public art installation in living memory. Politicians including David Cameron, then Prime Minister, called for it to be extended, but Cummins insisted it was supposed to be transient. Now, however, the poppies are back at the Tower. We are speaking over Zoom and Cummins, aged 47, is in his garden in Derbyshire ahead of the unveiling of a new poppy installation to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day. The poppies are fewer in number – 33,000 compared to the original 888,246 – but they are displayed within the Tower itself (so only visible if you buy a ticket to enter) in a striking 'explosion' of red in front of the iconic White Tower, with a cascade of poppies from its upper left-hand corner. On a bright morning in May, they look as majestic as they did a decade ago, glinting in the sunlight. The poppies on display have been taken out of storage from the Imperial War Museum – Cummins had always insisted that he wouldn't make any more. 'The idea of it being transient was really important, because it [represented] the bodies going back,' he says. 'Each one represents a soldier, his soul, and they go back to where they came from.' The majority of them, in fact, were sold for £25 to raise money for military charities – more on that later – but a number were taken on tour around the country and then maintained within the Imperial War Museum's collection. Within a day or two of Queen Elizabeth's visit to the Tower, every poppy made available to buy had sold out. For Cummins, the poppies entrusted to the Museum represent 'the unnamed soldiers… the bodies that never went back.' Is he worried that, this time round, the installation won't have the same impact? 'It won't… but it doesn't have to,' he says. 'It's a totally different installation on its own.' In some ways, though, it feels 'like an old friend… I'm really excited about it all, and it's all the emotion from last time building up,' he says. 'I love the idea of it being recreated in the way it has. It has a familiarity, a comfort, but it also has… new stories to tell.' Cummins grew up in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, the son of a builder and a healthcare worker. He has one brother, who still lives nearby with his two children – Cummins, who is single and without kids, lives with his mum in the Derbyshire countryside. His father died suddenly 20 years ago from a heart attack at work and he had impressed on his son to take courses that would lead to secure employment. So after Cummins left school, he spent two years at catering college and then trained as an architectural model maker before finally choosing to follow his passion and complete a degree in craft – now called fine art – at the University of Derby's College of Arts. He graduated in 2010 and set up a ceramics studio shortly after. His first big break came two years later, when he was chosen as one of the artists with disabilities – Cummins has severe dyslexia – to produce an installation for a programme called Unlimited, which was commissioned to celebrate disabled artists' work for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. His project, the English Flower Garden, consisted of six flower installations at six famous British residences, including Blenheim Palace and the Althorp estate. When I ask what his father would have made of it all, Cummins says he 'probably would have told me to get a proper job'. He struggled at school, where 'dyslexia wasn't really a thing… I grew up in the Eighties in the north of England,' he says. 'They helped as much as they could and as much as they could understand… I was the kid who 'tried.' That was my report – I 'tried' a lot.' His dyslexia, which was unearthed after he left school, makes reading a challenge. 'I don't read very well at all,' he says. 'I see colours instead of words.' He relies on technology to read out text messages and emails. It has been the dyslexia, however, that turned out to be the making of him. He came up with the idea for Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at his local library – he had been considering a project in honour of the centenary of the First World War and was looking for inspiration. 'I force myself to go and look at things in libraries and attempt to read books,' he says, which he describes as 'one of [his] quirks.' 'I found a document [from someone] who fought in the First World War… and in that document was [the line] 'The blood swept lands and seas of red.' It was phonetically written, so I connected with it. It clicked something in my head, and I went to see how many people had died in the War.' From there, fate stepped in. 'I rang so many people around the country to see if I could do an installation there,' he says. 'Mainly castles, because I needed the space. And then I rang the Tower of London, and my name is the same as someone's friend [the Tower's head of operations knew another Paul Cummins] – and I didn't shut up until they said, 'Ok, come in and pitch the project.' So I did. It was fortuitous – it was meant to happen. And it all fell into place from there – everything unfolded with momentum.' The momentum was so great, in fact, that Cummins had to find hundreds of people to help create the poppies, each of which was hand-stamped from red clay and shaped at his workshop in Derbyshire, or Johnson Tiles in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent. 'I went from employing nobody to 300 people within two months, and that was a bit of a shock,' he says. 'We were open 24/7.' For Cummins, the project came at a significant physical, emotional, and financial cost – he lost the use of two fingers and thousands of pounds. The project was criticised for the percentage of money that ended up going to charity: of the £23 million raised overall, £9.5 million was donated, including a £1.1 million VAT rebate. Most of the rest, however, went in costs, and Cummins says he made a 'modest loss in the thousands'. On the injury, which happened when his clothing got caught in a rolling press, he says: 'I live with it and I move on… I believe doing [the poppy project] helped me get over doing what I did to my hand, because I didn't have to think about it.' He has been left with chronic pain in his right hand and limited use of his fingers, but he has found ways to continue working. 'I have to throw on the potter's wheel slightly differently – I have to use my palm, and things like that. And have a bit more of a rest, because it makes my hand ache,' he says. 'I don't dwell on it. If I dwell on it, I'd overthink it and make things worse.' While the response was largely positive, the installation also drew criticism in some quarters. At the time, one critic called it 'a deeply aestheticised, prettified and toothless war memorial.' One academic said the installation marked 'another wave in the rising tide of British nationalism'. But Cummins believes we should be proud of the poppy and what it represents, now more than ever. 'I didn't read too much of the press for my sanity,' he says. 'But the people who say [the poppy] is nationalist, and so on… I think they're totally wrong. It's a symbol of hope, and a symbol of how beauty can come of great loss.' Nevertheless, the poppies changed his life for the better. He was awarded the MBE in the 2015 New Year Honours, and is currently working on an 'immersive experience' for Andrew Lloyd Webber 's Phantom of the Opera in New York. 'I keep myself to myself, but once people know what I've done, they want to interact with me in a slightly different way, and they want to know more,' he says. 'It all worked out brilliantly. I don't really have any regrets… maybe just losing a finger. I think everything worked out as it was meant to work out. It was fate.'
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
SIC Forensics Falcons earn bronze at national competition
HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) – Officials say the Southeastern Illinois College (SIC) Forensic Falcons ended a successful season April 12, earning a bronze medal in team individual events at the Phi Rho Pi National Tournament in Norfolk, Virginia. The Falcons also captured several individual medals in interpretation and public speaking. SIC says Coach Paul Cummins was awarded the Distinguished Service Award at the tournament, honoring him for his contributions to the speech and debate community in Illinois and throughout the country. Second year team member Rachel Russell, of Norris City, earned three medals at the tournament. 'This team has worked hard all season long, and it's gratifying to see their effort rewarded,' notes Jenny Billman, Director of Forensics. 'I am also exceptionally grateful to coach with Paul Cummins and Rachel Parish. Their expertise continues to amaze me.' Two local winners chosen of Indiana DNR photo contest Officials note the 2025 national tournament marks the end of the Falcons' 2024-2025 season, which also included winning the community college division at the National Speech Championship in March. SIC's Forensic Falcons have a long history of success, placing first at Phi Rho Pi in overall national competition in 1986, 2005, and 2021. In terms of the Eyewitness News coverage area, SIC says these are the individual results from the tournament: Rachel Russell Gold in dramatic interpretation Silver in duo interpretation with partner Abby Zirkelbach Bronze in prose interpretation Abby Zirkelbach, of Marion, Illinois Silver in dramatic interpretation Silver in duo interpretation with partner Rachel Russell SIC says the Forensic Falcons will begin preparing for the 2025-26 season when SIC's fall semester begins in August. No prior forensics experience is required to join the team. Students interested in participating may email Jenny Billman at 'Eyewitness News. Everywhere you are.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
