Exclusive | Navy lands helicopter on NYCs Cardozo High School football field for 300 eager cadets: They brought Fleet Week to us
The Navy is all about higher education — literally and figuratively.The military branch landed an MH-60S Knighthawk chopper on the baseball field at Benjamin N.
Cardozo High School in Bayside on Friday in front of hundreds of bewildered and galvanized student cadets.The demonstration — a part of Fleet Week — was a dream for the Queens high school’s Navy Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (NJROTC) four years in the making and marked the first time such an event had been done on city schools’ property in at least a decade.“Last year, we went to Fleet Week.This year, they brought Fleet Week to us,” said Riddhi Chauhan, 16, a junior and next year’s cadet commanding officer.The Post was afforded a bird’s eye view of the incredible ride, which kicked off at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, crossed over Central Park and through the length of Queens until coming to a spectacular rest at the high school.Hundreds of students cheered on as the Naval officers from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit performed a fast rope demonstration — meaning they slid down the tether onto the baseball field as the chopper hovered a few dozen feet off the ground.The energy remained high throughout the remainder of the event as the high school cadets met with the officers and caught a glimpse of what their future might look like.“It’s huge.
Just seeing everyone coming together for an event like this, it means the world to know that we’re all here for each other … We are one big family,” said Shanelle Kelly, 18, a senior looking forward to attending Norwich University, a military school in Vermont, in the fall.Watching the helicopter demonstration and meeting the naval officers got Kelly “so excited” to achieve her dreams of working with the Marine Warfare Unit, something she has chosen because she knows it will be challenging.Cardozo had been vehemently vying for the helicopter and fast rope demonstration for four years — almost as long as ...