She's an educator with a creative streak whose initiative to broaden the spectrum of learning led to something even bigger than she can imagine.

I said, Well, let's find a project that will introduce our children to a broader world, a different culture.

Something meet Whitwell middle school principal Linda Hooper.

Coming up on this edition of the A-list.

Linda Hooper, this Whitwell, Tennessee educator, has more than 31 years of experience in and out of the classroom.

She's taught at the elementary, middle school and high school levels was once the director of curriculum for Marion County schools.

And now she's the principal at Whitwell Middle School.

She is also the facilitator of a major project that brought international recognition to the small township of Whitwell.

The project is the featured subject of an award winning documentary called Paperclips.

From a corner of Tennessee tonight.

Perhaps this generation is teaching us.

Well, Linda, thank you so much for being on the A-list.

And thank you for having us.

To your beautiful school, your new middle school, in Whitwell Tennessee.

We're glad to be here.

We are very glad to have you here.

And we are so proud of this school.

I think this community is probably more excited about this school and its newness and all its perks than they've been about anything in a long, long time.

How long have you been principal of Whitwell middle.

School.

I've been principal for Whitwell middle school.

This is my 15th year.

Wow.

Well, tell me a little bit about the town and the community of Whitwell for those who are watching and have never been here, I really don't know much about you.

Whitwell is a town of we have about 1600 people.

We are.

We used to be a coal mining town.

Coal mining was a huge industry here until about 1983, when we had a really bad accident that killed a large number of coal miners.

Since then, and ongoing with that coal mining industry, we're pretty much a bedroom community for Chattanooga.

We work at a professional job drive to Chattanooga to work.

As the point of inspiration.

The year 1998 is monumental.

It's when Hooper began to brainstorm lessons in diversity, seeking the best way to facilitate this.

She recruited language arts teacher Sandra Roberts, along with a lesson plan from an existing Holocaust program that was found by then Assistant Principal David Smith with idea in hand, no funding and the support of the students.

And after school program incorporating parental involvement was launched.

When those children came with their families and their families began to look at the enormity of the Holocaust, you know, we we think about the 6 million Jewish people who were murdered.

But then these families and these children began to discover that just from records, we know there were 11 million people and that, you know, they came from all walks of life and they began to try to grasp that enormity and to think that Hitler did this simply because he was looking for a scapegoat, simply because he was he had such hatred, you know, simply because he stereotyped these people, gave Jewish people the blame for all the ills of Germany.

And the kids began to see how easily your remarks, just your ordinary remarks to people can sort of start growing, you know, and the great thing is they began to realize how little things can become big, horrible things.

You know, one of them came up to me one day and she said, Miss Hooper, have you ever looked at Hitler?

I want to say Wilbur, but, you know, I lost my principal self.

And I said, In what way?

She said, Well, the man wasn't good looking.

Well, I see it as it not in my book, you know.

She said, Have you looked at his family background?

And I said, Tell me about it.

She said, Well, he was from a very dysfunctional family.

And I was like, Oh, really?

And she said, How did he get so powerful?

And I said to her, How do you think he got so powerful?

And she sat there in a couple of seconds.

She said, because he started with the little things and he built those little things into bigger things until the bigger things took over before anybody realized it.

And I you know, I said to her and the little things were she said he started with his words.

Then he started with very sneaky things, Miss Hope or cartoons, then little articles in newspapers, then radio programs.

And I said, And that tells you quite how powerful little things are.

Do you understand that?

She said to me, and I said, Yes, I do.

Do you understand how powerful you are?

Now, what kind of example are you setting for the rest of the kids in this school?

And she said nothing.

Well, the next year, this child, when we were studying this child, said to me, Now, Miss Hooper, I do not get 6 million, you know.

Do you get that?

Have you ever seen 6 million?

Referring to the number of.

Jewish number of Jewish people who had been persecuted, murdered, but not murdered.

From there.

It was like a grandfather, A great grandfather.

He just.

And he'd look at you and he'd just make you feel all warm and loving and sad toward him.

I was with my brother.

My brother was three years older than I am, but I had no idea.

When they first arrived to Auschwitz.

Sam and his brother and his mother and his little brother met with Dr. Mengele outside.

He was the one who chose left or right names, and he said his mother and little brother left.

And he sent Sam and his brother right.

And so Sam did not know what had happened.

And after they had went through the showers, Sam found a guard and asked.

I asked him.

I said, please tell me.

We arrived last night.

And I arrived.

My mother and my brother.

Where are they?

What happened to them?

And that man shows me smoke coming out from a chimney.

I did not understand what that means till I found out that.

That chimneys from the crematorium.

She said, Well, we need to be able to visualize this.

We need to be able to see what it is.

And I said, Well, I don't think we can gather 6 million people in one place.

She said.

No, I didn't mean that.

I mean, we need to collect something.

So I said, Go to the Internet.

Go do some research.

Find something that either is connected to World War Two or is connected to the Holocaust.

And if it's small enough, we'll consider collecting it.

Well, about three days later, she comes in and she says, We're going to collect paper clips, not.

And we notice, she said, we will be collecting paper clips that said, Oh, really?

And she says, Yes, we're going to collect paper clips.

And I said, Well, could you explain to me why we're going to collect paper clip?

She says, Of course, Joseph Thaler was Jewish.

He's correct.

He is credited with inventing the paperclip.

He was Norwegian.

The Norwegians wore them on their lapels during World War Two as a protest against Nazi policies.

Here's the letter that we're going to send out.

Sit.

Oh, really?

You know, and I'm sitting there thinking, okay, it's paper clips.

We get 100,000.

You know, we'll it'll be okay.

It'll be a good learning experience.

Kids will get experience writing letters.

They'll connect to something.

They've already learned this muc So they registered the project with the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.. Lina get her 90 plus year old lady survivor.

She read about this and she calls up Peter and Dagmar Schroeder and she says, You all are going to Whitwell and you are going to write about these children and you are going to see that they get their 6 million paper clips.

Because at this point, how many had the children actually collected?

Oh, probably we had 100,000.

Okay.

Yeah, that was a generous count.

So Peter and Dagmar Schroeder came here one day.

They called me up and they said, We are German journalist, we are stationed at the White House.

We write for a German newspaper syndicate about American politics.

They go back to Washington.

They call Dina Smith at the Washington Post, and they tell her she needs to come here and write an article.

So she goes back to the Washington Post and she writes her article about these children and their quest to memorialize the victims of the Holocaust.

And it came out during Passover.

Well, we have 150,000 paper clips.

The day that article came out, and six weeks later we had 24 million and counting.

They came from everywhere.

Some gentleman who owned a paperclip company sent a million in one shipment.

A million?

A million?

Yes.

We got them from all shapes, sizes, religions, colors.

Every state in the union and most of the countries in Europe, all seven of the continents.

We have a paper clip.

A tiny paperclip, one after another, representing the millions of lives lost during a dark age of discrimination and hatred.

Documentary crews filmed more than 200 hours of the students and parents working as shipments came in and letters with the stories of celebrities, loved ones and friends paying tribute and even personal accounts.

I have a very difficult time explaining to any of my seven grandchildren what the Holocaust was all about.

I am a Jew.

The whole depravity of what happened in the concentration camps really struck home when I saw pictures of the atrocities perpetrated on the Jewish people.

Those pictures are still very much alive in my memories.

I'm sending you one paperclip.

It is my paperclip.

In the future, I will remember your project with every paperclip I come in contact with, as it will be a symbol of what your students are trying to accomplish.

I am moved by your endeavors.

Bless you, Tom Bosley.

Hooper says so many paper clips came in the question of where to put them arrows and how do you store more than 6 million paper clips and then preserve the intent?

Each work collected for this question became an educational journey of its own.

Tell me about the Children's Holocaust Memorial.

Tell me about collecting those millions of paper clips and then figuring out how you were going to find a way and in a proper place to house them and to celebrate what you had done and to honor those that you were remembering.

And the paper clips began to come.

We were just you know, we were like, what are we going to do with these where we're going to put them?

We have to be careful with them because each paper clip, most of the time they came with a letter telling about the person you know or why this paper clip was sent.

It was for somebody, grandmother or, you know, their brother or somebody they didn't have anymore.

And so here we are with all these.

And people began to say, Oh, you know, Meltham Dam make a monument.

And I'm like, I don't think so.

These represent souls who've been through a fire of hell, and we are not about to put them through another fire.

But what do you do with them?

I mean, what do you do with 30 million paper clips?

We need an authentic German transport car because this is perfect.

You know, we put these in here, we say, okay, no longer transport car.

Do you represent death and dying and hate?

But we memorialize these souls within your confines and we say in this world there is hope and children are the hope of the world.

You know, these are the people who have the power to make the world what we want it to be, to bring peace on earth.

And these children have worked hard.

So all we need is a transport car.

Okay.

The Schroders are there.

They decide that?

Yeah, we'll do this.

We'll see that your children.

We are so into this project.

You've done all this work, You have all these things.

We'll get you a transport car.

So they take five weeks of unpaid leave from their jobs.

They start scouring the world.

In the former Eastern Democratic Republic of Germany.

They find this car in a private museum, and the God does not want to give it up.

But Dagmar Schroeder is not going to take no for an answer.

Okay.

So she keeps at it and she tells him about the wonderful children of Whitwell.

And while she's doing that, while he's thinking about it, she's going around among her friends and family, she and Peter raising money to purchase the car.

So he finally gives it up and they purchase the car.

And then I never knew that it was so difficult to move anything from one country to another.

Well, Peter and Dagmar do all this.

They convinced the German navy to let them put the car in there, bring it to the United States, to the Port of Baltimore.

Now, when it arrived at the port of Baltimore and got on the train, headed to Chattanooga, yes, that was September 11th, 2001.

It was during that time, September the 11th.

It started.

What did you and and the faculty and students here think about really the irony there that here's this train bringing what would soon be a symbol of hope.

But on a day where the world was suffering such a tragedy.

I think of that day and that term like I think of survivors where there is hope, there are new beginnings.

Survivors demonstrate to us the power of hope.

When you look at the lives they've made after the Holocaust, that they were able to endure, the things they endured, things that are, to me, unspeakable.

And I think I could never have spoken about the things that I've heard survivors talk about.

I think it says to us that they are you can take whatever is and you can choose to make better or you can choose to make worse that day.

I think as we spoke with the children and as we thought about the movement of the train here, the car here, what we realized was there, I cannot solve all the world's problems.

I cannot stop every evil.

But it is imperative that I make an effort to do the best with what I have to exercise my personal choice, to exercise my personal power.

An original railcar and an animate object tied to the Holocaust as a reminder of the millions of Jewish men and women who are transported to concentration camps and ultimately to their death just outside of the Middle Schools entrance, a memorial holding millions of paperclips, a memorial bringing visitors from all over the world to this small town of 1600 residents.

Hooper shows me the Schroeder's book and a suitcase filled with letters of apology to Anne Frank, written by German soldiers.

They're all addressed to AM.

This is an essay.

This is Anne Frank.

This is.

Awesome.

I've written little things to Anthony.

Somebody is interested enough in what we're doing to take this kind of time.

I think it's amazing enough that they even know about it.

Okay, well, there are people in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who don't know what we will tell you.

That's absolutely true.

This is.

Awesome.

What will and what will middle school in particular has now become a place where people venture from really all over the world just to see what you have done, just to visit the railcar, which is now the Children's Holocaust Memorial.

Tell me, how does that make you feel?

How does that make the students in this community feel that now a town that maybe people had a say, where is a community where people say they're.

These children are so proud they won't know every day or go have visitors today?

Did you have visitors today?

These children are fascinated by the stories that are told, and they are they will come to you after they've led a tour.

They lead tours every Friday and talk to you about what the people said.

And and they'll say, Oh, Miss Hooper, aren't we lucky to be free and never to have suffered like this?

And I say, Yes, you are.

And you have to remember it's your actions that are going to determine if we stay this way.

Always remember that your actions, your personally responsible, it's just been the best experiences.

I think it's something every educator hopes for to have to know that you're the children have accomplished something and that the community has back their their work and their project.

It's just it's just us.

And that's enabling.

You know.

I know a lot of people have two questions.

They want to know what's next for for your school and for your students.

And are you still collecting paper.

Clips that we get paper clips every week.

We don't get them in a flood.

I'll go with paper clips first, but we get paper clips every week telling us another story about survival or just sometimes The other day I got one just from a fifth grade student and she enclosed not only a paper clip but a dollar donation to help us continue the project and telling us, you know, how how important it had been for her to see the movie.

I just think that what if what we our future plans are just to encourage people to know more about their own personal power?

The education process continues even though the collection of paper clips has far surpassed the original 6 million mark since Whitwell Middle School has now collected more than 30 million paper clips to date.

Reading letters, it's like you get to know people that aren't here anymore.

Hooper says the knowledge and understanding of the world has grown immeasurably for many in this town of Whitwell, Tennessee.

Groups who come here to tour are Holocaust students who want to learn about things, people who want to do research.

So many people want to just come and read the letters.

We have over 30,000 letters, and that's not counting the e-mails.

So what will, it seems, isn't really that different from maybe a decade ago.

You still have a pretty homogeneous community of students.

You still have pretty much the same church base and the same people who grew up here.

But because of this project, what has.

Changed?

I think our children's view of the world, they realize, number one, how lucky they are to live in such a good place where people care about them.

Number two, they realize that everything they do impacts the whole world.

You know, I always tell them if a mouse runs across the San Francisco bridge and in theoretical physics, those vibrations are felt all over the world.

So every time you open your mouth, be sure something good comes out because your vibration is or felt not only in this little pond that you're rippling in, but all over the world.

So it's up to you to make sure that your vibrations are making the world better.

You know that you're not adding something bad to the world.

So, you know, I think that's what the change is.

We will have something really to be proud of their children.

Number one, we have great kids here.

They have given people they have taken this instrument of death, the death car.

That's what they would call death cars.

And they've transformed it.

They have made it a symbol of hope.

A symbol of light and a symbol of what you can do if you use your personal power for something important and something good.

Hooper says through this, students have learned the importance of being involved in their community and the power that one person has to make a difference as an individual.

Hooper says she also has changed putting away the introvert she once was and now speaking about this program to captive audiences around the world.

Will you ever look at a paperclip the same way?

Oh heavens no.

Because each one of them talks to you.

You know, there are stories I could tell you about almost every paperclip in that car.

They speak to you, soul to soul, spirit to spirit.

And they say we can find common ground and peace in this world.

We can.

There is always hope.

That's what survivors talk about.

Hope.

That's what we all need to talk about.

Hope we can dig this.

And these children, have they given hope to people that thought nobody cared?

Well, thank you for being with us, for being on the A-list and also for being an inspiration for people, I think, all over this region and really all over the world.

And I think if people haven't been to the memorial, they should come and they should witness what you have done here, because I think you've definitely made an impact on all of us.

Thank you for letting us for coming here and letting us talk about this.

But remember this.

I haven't made any impact a squeeze.

Children who've worked so hard and their teachers who've worked so hard, who've made the difference.

Agreed.

Thank you.

Be sure to tune in next week as I sit down with a true Chattanooga mover and shaker, Booker T Scruggs, an educator, a musician and a civil rights activist.

That's what made our school so unique.

With the class of 1960 that we did initiate the sit ins here in Chattanooga.

That's Booker T Scruggs.

Next week on the A-list.

I'm Allison Leibovitz.

See you then.