Every year, dozens of Blair students step forward to lead classes during Equity Lab Day, teaching their peers about subjects they have researched deeply. Held in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month, Equity Lab Day encourages the community to keep learning about the full spectrum of the human experience. Among last year’s presenters was Selina Liu ’26, whose road to Equity Lab Day started in the rolling foothills of New Jersey, far from the Pacific battlefields of World War II, when she happened to stumble across a story that would change how she viewed the world.

It was December 2023, and the high school sophomore was scrolling through the Internet when she found an article about a Chinese nonprofit organization that locates the remains of Chinese soldiers who died abroad in World War II. The article referenced the Flying Tigers, an elite group of American pilots who fought alongside China in 1941 and 1942, resisting the Japanese invasion. Many of them never made it home. 

“I had never heard about the Flying Tigers,” Selina says. “But the more I read, the more I felt their story built a bridge between worlds that once felt impossibly distant. It was as if two halves of my identity, which often are at odds with each other, were meeting in that same spirit of friendship.”

Selina’s curiosity quickly turned into a quest. In short time, she reached out to the nonprofit from the article, which connected her with Bob Willett, a 98-year-old retiree living in Rockledge, Florida, whose cousin, Jimmie Browne, had been a Flying Tiger pilot. On November 17, 1942, Jimmie’s plane crashed in China’s Cangshan Mountain, killing all three crew members. His family spent decades wondering what happened to his remains and hoping to one day bring him home to Chicago.

Over spring break in 2024, Selina and her family found themselves driving the long stretch down I-95 to Florida, so she could meet Bob in person. The two quickly struck up a friendship. “Bob reminded me of my grandpa,” she recalls. “Funny, loving and always joking around.” Since his retirement, Bob had flown to China six times, hiring guides and trekking through Himalayan mountain passes in hopes of bringing his cousin home. Though he eventually located the wreckage of Jimmie’s plane, the remains were never recovered.

That first trip to visit Bob Willett turned into a series of articles Selina wrote about Jimmie’s history and a summer of research that crossed the ocean. When she returned to Florida last June to visit Bob a second time, Selina found that her friend’s health had declined. “He looked older,” Selina recalls quietly. “His voice, once steady, now came with pauses. He needed to rest before answering my questions.” In that moment, Selina realized just how fragile history is. “It doesn’t just live in books or archives, but rather in people’s bodies, in their memories, and in the time we still have with them.” 

Later last summer, with the help from the same nonprofit, Selina herself traveled to rural villages in Hunan, China, joining the search for Jimmie Browne’s remains and meeting descendants of those who had rescued other Flying Tiger pilots during the war. “Talking to them made the history come alive,” she says. “They weren’t just names in a history book. They were real people who gave everything to help strangers from a world they barely knew.”

Selina found that, in addition to Jimmie Browne, there were many other American pilots who had been assisted by the Chinese villagers. In one village, a man showed her a simple fishing hook—given by P-51 Mustang pilot Colonel Marvin to the family who had saved him, which they had safeguarded for 80 years. She learned of Colonel Rex Barber, a Flying Tiger ace who returned decades later to thank his rescuers, and of Colonel Upchurch, once a nameless soldier whose grave had been tended faithfully by villagers for more than 60 years.

Since then, Selina has made it her mission to preserve and share Jimmie’s story, along with that of the others she learned about, before they fade from memory. So, last January, Selina led an Equity Lab Day session at Blair entitled “Friendship in the Face of War,” which included a photo exhibition and discussion. 

In summer 2025, Selina was also invited to speak at several international commemorations, including the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in WWII, held in Hong Kong, and another aboard the USS Hornet in California. Working with her brother, who helped film and edit a documentary about her research, Selina has also teamed up with the San Francisco WWII Pacific War Memorial Hall to share her work with a wider audience. 

Beyond just satisfying her historical interest, Selina’s efforts have also taken on deeply personal meaning—she’s been helping Bob fulfill his final wish to have his cousin’s sacrifice formally recognized and his story told. Through her website, Selina continues to ensure that these fading memories, and the human bonds behind them, are remembered by future generations. “I am hoping to inspire more people my age,” she says. “The story has been left to the older generation and people in my generation don’t know about it. I want to help share these stories before they are gone.”

Now, as Selina begins thinking about college, she is sure she’ll continue studying history. “If we keep telling these oral histories, more people will learn and the history will live on,” she says. “So many of the historical archives only portray what’s considered ‘important’ in the mainstream, but there are other stories, like that of Jimmie Browne, just as worthy of being told.” 

That desire to preserve history is what is bringing Selina back to the classroom once again. This January, she will lead another Equity Lab Day session, revisiting “Friendship in the Face of War” so that a new class of Blair students can hear the story for themselves. Through her teaching, Selina hopes to show her classmates that history is not distant or abstract—it’s kept alive through research, storytelling and advocacy. She believes that these stories preserve cultural identity and build bridges of understanding across nations and communities. So, the next Equity Lab Day, as the members of the Blair community decide which session to join, just remember that behind each one may lie research, carefully uncovered across time and space, and a remarkable story waiting to be told.