LH middle school students gather gifts for flood victims
Kelly Tunney | Herald-Standard
Laurel Highlands eighth-grader Cody Stenger, bottom left, and seventh-grader Austin Sova wrap gifts in Susan Wilson’s art class at Laurel Highlands Middle School as part of a toy drive for nearly a hundred Connellsville-area students affected in August by severe flooding.
Kelly Tunney | Herald-Standard
Eighth-grade student Leann Brink, left, holds down wrapping paper for art teacher Susan Wilson to tape. Students in Wilson’s class wrapped gifts for Connellsville-area students who were affected by flooding in August.
Kelly Tunney | Herald-Standard
From left to right, middle schoolers Nick Gabriel, Carly Koval, Troshawn Mickens, Dante Delverme and Jenna Schnatterly consult a gift manifest to make sure that the presents they are wrapping will go to the right children.
Rebecca Devereaux|Herald-Standard
Eight-month-old Vanessa shows her grandfather, Wally Burnsworth, a gift that was in her stocking, donated by Laurel Highlands Middle School for families affected by flooding in Connellsville-area communities. Presents and stockings for all ages were recently gifted at Central Fellowship Church in Connellsville.
Rebecca Devereaux|Herald-Standard
Each child and adolescent in attendance at a gift-giving event were able to pick out two donated gifts collected by students at Laurel Highlands Middle School. Grace Shroyer, 3, rips open her gift, a Fisher-Price medical kit.
Rebecca Devereaux|Herald-Standard
Jenna Schnatterly, an eighth-grader at Laurel Highlands Middle School, hands a Christmas stocking to Melissa Breakiron, of Connellsville, during a gift-giving event at Central Fellowship Church in Connellsville a few days before Christmas.
Rebecca Devereaux|Herald-Standard
Susan Wilson, art teacher at Laurel Highlands Middle School and organizer of a gift fundraiser to help Connellsville flood victims, helps Brittany Wingrove, 12, pick out a gift during a gift-giving exchange at Central Fellowship Church in Connellsville a few days before Christmas.
Rebecca Devereaux|Herald-Standard
Laurel Highland Middle School students look for Christmas stockings to pass out to those in attendance of a gift-giving event at Central Fellowship Church in Connellsville. Students collected about 200 toys and dozens of stockings to give to Connellsville flood victims.
One extracurricular group at Laurel Highlands Middle School made helping a habit this holiday season.
While making ornaments for a tree drive to provide Christmas trees to Connellsville flood victims, the middle school’s ski club simultaneously took on another initiative, this time ensuring that Connellsville children would receive gifts for Christmas.
The group of 30 students organized a gift drive for nearly 100 children affected by heavy flooding that hit Connellsville-area communities in late August. Over the first three weeks of December, they collected and wrapped 200 gifts for children ranging from infants to teenagers.
The undertaking culminated with a gift-giving event at Central Fellowship Church in Connellsville a few days prior to Christmas that was attended by families affected by the flooding.
Laurel Highlands Middle School art teacher Susan Wilson knows floods well. Her family fell victim to the Johnstown flood of 1977, displaced to a makeshift camp. Having experienced that type of tragedy, Wilson said, she knows how far a small act of kindness can go.
“We just wanted to do something to pay it back,” said Wilson, who sponsors the ski club. “It’s someone that is in need that is in our area. We wanted (the gifts) to go to someone who we knew it would help. Some of these kids don’t have anything.”
Gifts ranged from cologne and makeup sets for older kids to Nerf guns, Legos and board games for the younger ones, Wilson said.
Amy Price, coordinator of the Greater Connellsville Flood Recovery Center, teamed up with Wilson and her students earlier in the month for the tree giveaway party. Her organization used an Internet forum that was created to communicate with flood victims to spread the word about the Laurel Highlands students’ gifting quest. Volunteers at the center called families to inquire about the children so the students had an idea of the kinds of gifts to collect, Price said.
While students brought many of the items to school themselves, they also collected donated gifts in a box in the school lobby. It seemed to never be empty, said Wilson. “We’d go down each day and there was always more toys.”
Laurel Highlands faculty participated in a dress-down day to assist in the purchase of wrapping paper.
When it came time to deliver the heap of presents, Wilson and company — with the help of various donors — made sure the occasion was especially festive.
In the decorated church hall, food was provided by Hartsek Family Catering of Uniontown, drinks by private donors. Mittens, hats and socks provided by Cheat Lake Elementary School in Morgantown, West Virginia, were stuffed into donated stockings. Santa dished out “snowman soup.”
Close to 150 people attended.
“The room was full,” said Price. “All of the seats were filled. It was standing room only.”
According to Price, the occasion helped provide a sense of community for flood survivors as they seek normality in their lives.
“What it says is that community can mean many different things. In this case, it extended outside of our borders into other cities and other states,” she said.
“It’s still our community, it’s just far bigger than we thought. We are community and we will be stronger — and we are already stronger — because of it.”