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BATAVIA — When someone tells you you can't do something, that you can't make a difference, take one small step out of your comfort zone.

That was Sharon Chaplain's main message to the students and veterans in the audience when she spoke to them Thursday in the Batavia High School Auditorium.

After finishing school at Batavia in 1983, Chaplain moved on to college. After a year, though, she realized a couple of things: that college is really expensive when you have to pay for it yourself and that she didn't want to be stuck with her mother, whom she loved, but felt was a little controlling.

"I knew that if I didn't do something drastic, I would be stuck with her for the rest of my life. What's more drastic than joining the service, right? So, that's what I did."

Chaplain said she initially signed up to join the Navy, but the Navy had closed its quota and suggested she try joining the Air Force. She passed the tests and was able to join. The Air Force told her she would report in November.

"When you're excited about something like that — I was — I started telling people," she recalled. "Not one, single person believed I could do it. Infact, one of my college professors laughed and said, 'No, seriously — what are you doing with your life?'"

Chaplain said she didn't think she would make it, either.

"I wasn't athletic, didn't go out for sports, I was a bookworm," she said.

She got on a plane and went to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training.

"If you've ever seen anything about basic training in the military ... it's pretty much all your getting is you're getting screamed at and you're cleaning and you're exercising the whole time," Chaplain said. "After a couple of days of that, I thought, 'You know, I think I've made the worst mistake of my life.'

"A couple of days later, I realized, 'You know ,this really isn't much different than being at home. My mother screamed at me a lot and made me clean a lot," she said. "Other than the exercise part, it wasn't much different. And, I was getting paid for it."

Chaplain said she also realized that her Air Force instructors knew she could not do a lot of the things they were asking of her. Since the instructors screamed at anyone who cried or complained when he or she couldn't do what they wanted, she decided to be quiet and give basic training her best shot.

"That's all they wanted for me — to quit complaining and try. So that's what I did. I graduated basic training ... I was never so happy in my life to be out of there."

She then went to tech school.

"This is where you learn how to do your job. This is also where you learn where your first assignment is," she said.

Chaplain said she throught about where she would like to go.

"I come home one day. There's my orders on my bed," she recalled. "I ripped them open and it says, 'Osan Air Base, ROK.' I went, 'That must be a typo, because there's no state with 'ROK.'"

When she asked one of her training instructors, the instructor laughed histerically.

"She said, 'You're going to the Republic of Korea,'" Chaplain said.

She did not enjoy Korea, which she said stunk, literally and figuratively. When Operation Desert Storm began, Chaplain and others didn't know what was going on or whether they would be deployed.

"We didn't even know we were at war until they announced it on the radio," Chaplain said. "I was writing home like a crazy person, because that's pretty much all you can do. My family's not big into letter-writing, especially my mother."

Her mother put Chaplain's name in a hat, which had something to do with people at home writing to members of the service, she says.

"All of a sudden, I started getting all these letters, which was fantastic, because I like to write," Chaplain said. "They were all saying, 'Hey, dear soldier, what's it like in the desert?' I'm like, 'I don't know. I'm in South Korea. How do I know what it's like in the desert?'"

Chaplain said that's what she wrote to people when she replied. The people she replied to wouldn't write back, she said.

One day, she got a package from a little, 9-year-old girl in Churchville.

"She gave me her picture. She sent me some puzzle books and some games," Chaplain said.

Chaplain said she wrote back to the girl, but never expected the girl to reply to her.

"She did. She said, 'I don't care where in the world you are. I want to write to you.'"

Chaplain said she thought this was great because someone was finally interested in her and wasn't just asking what it was like in the desert.

The two of them began to write back and forth to one another. At one point, Chaplain told the girl, "There's lots of places in the world that are more wonderful than South Korea. I hope you do get a chance to go to them. I just want you to remember one thing. When you see that flag and when you hear the 'Star-Spangled Banner ... I want you to remember that flag and that song represent the best of the United States and it represents everybody who's ever worn this uniform."

Chaplain never heard back from the girl and thought she'd lost a friend. She eventually left the military and came back to this area. She always wondered what happened to the girl to whom she'd been writing, but wondered how she would ever find her.

Her search eventually resulted in getting in touch with a TV news station.

"I belong to a writers' group, so I wrote about her and what she helped me get through in Korea," Chaplain said. "I read it to my writers' group and there was silence. They said, 'We have to help you find her.'"

The lead anchor from the station came to Chaplain's house to talk to her about her story. The story aired on a at around 10 p.m. on a Friday. Chaplain admitted that she didn't stay up to watch the segment.

The next day, she was grocery shopping with her husband when she got a text.

"As I'm coming back, I get a text and it says, 'Sharon, they found her,'" Chaplain said.

She soon found out that her pen pal still lived in the area and she wanted to meet Chaplain. The news anchor then called and said, "Do you want to meet her? Can we film it?"

Chaplain was hesitant, but she went into the house of the the girl, now an adult. The woman told her she had been having a tough time at the time she was writing to Chaplain, and that her parents were going through an ugly divorce.

"Your letters mean everything to me, because they helped me get through this horrible time that I was going through," the woman told Chaplain.

Chaplain told the woman she had been searching for her for 25 years, just to say "Thank you."

"As much as my letters meant to you, that's the way I feel about your letters, because I was having a really hard time in Korea," Chaplain told the woman. "I looked forward to your letters. You helped me get through that."

This led back to where she started her speech, Chaplain said.

"If anybody ever tells you you can't do something, you can't make a difference, I don't care if you don't even remember my face, my name, anything. Remember this story. Because, you know what? A 9-year-old girl made a difference in my life."

All you have to do to make a difference is take that step out of your comfort zone, Chaplain said.

"That's what she did and that's what I did in joining the service," the former Air Force member said.

In the audience were at least four servicemen: Navy veterans David Panek of Churchville, Vic Digregorio of Byron, Tom Cecere and Rocco Pellegrino of Batavia. Cecere and Pellegrino, who had attended last year's program, said it was very enjoyable. His granddaughter, Maggie Cecere, a doctor and member of the Air Force, graduated from Batavia and his grandson, Zack Cecere, is a freshman there.

"I think it's important that the kids and the veterans get to intermingle like this," Cecere said. "Patriotism is very, very, very important. I don't know how much they really know about what we went through ... but, twofold, it's important that we're here for them, too. They're doing this nice thing for veterans."

What did they enjoy about last year's Veterans Day program in the district?

"Just being here with the students that they recognize that we served," said Pellegrino, who got to see his grandson, senior Matthew Wittmeyer, and granddaughter, Mia Pellegrino, also a senior.

Panek and Digregorio were attending their first Veterans Day program put on by the district. They said Tom Cecere encouraged them to come to it.

"We'd like to thank the school for doing this," Digregorio said.