On a cold and snowy Saturday morning, students from Greenwood schools were out in their community helping elderly residents prepare their homes for winter.
Roughly 160 Greenwood Community High School students raked leaves, cleaned gutters and cleaned windows as part of the school’s winterization project, a decades-old tradition of helping those who can’t prepare their homes for winter by themselves. Students have taken in part in the tradition for three decades. Teachers, staff members and parents also take part, said Taylor Dick, a 17-year-old senior who helped organize this year’s event.
“We’ll do it — rain, snow, sleet — it doesn’t matter. We’re going to do it,” Dick said. “We go out and people bring in equipment to rake leaves and then we have trimmers and branch cutters, stuff like that.”
This is exactly what they did, despite the snow. Saturday’s winterization project marked the first time it had ever snowed on the day of the project, said Laura Stadtfeld, a family and consumer teacher at the high school and faculty adviser for the project. This is her 25th year of helping lead the winterization project which her peer class organizes.
“This is my first time in snow. We did do it in rainy sleet one year,” Stadtfeld said. “… The kids have had such a positive attitude (this year). I just kept having more and more volunteers come, even though we knew the weather was going to change.”
Along with the nearly 160 students, 17 staff members also took part in winterization. Superintendent Terry Terhune, GCHS Principal Michael Gasaway and Mayor Mark Myers participated, Stadtfeld said.
Participants went to more than 60 homes in the city for the project. This year organizers actually had to turn people away because there was such a high need, but they didn’t have enough participants, she said.
The students in Stadtfeld’s peer class did most of the organizing for the project with her help. One group called the homeowners and went out to assess houses for what work was needed while another asked for donations from restaurants to feed the volunteers breakfast and lunch. One group also designed and sold shirts for everyone who was taking part to wear, she said.
“It is student-led, and that’s what I’m so proud of,” Stadtfeld said. “I can say I do a lot of work, and maybe I take the stress, but really the students do all the work. It’s amazing to me.”
Senior Abby Davis, 17, helped run what students call “celebration” — feeding the volunteers free breakfast and lunch. One of the most challenging parts of taking part in the project for Davis was finding enough time to go to all 60 homes for assessments. Students had one 45-minute class period a week to go to every house, she said.
“We went out every Monday and we had over 60 houses to assess, so even I had to help assess houses,” Davis said. “You have to call them and make sure they answer. Obviously, they’re the elderly, so they either don’t answer — they think you’re a scammer and they don’t answer — so it was hard to find time to fit all 60 houses in what seven Mondays?”
One day Davis, along with senior Ava Stein — one of the lead student organizers — used a day off they had to go assess eight houses in one day to get them out of the way, Davis said.
Prior to heading out on Saturday, senior Sahejpreet Kaur, 17, was looking forward to going out and seeing the elderly again. Kaur has taken part in the project for her entire high school career, and always loves meeting with them, she said.
“I’ve always had a lot of fun going out,” Kaur said. “… Every elderly home that we go to, they’re always so nice and sweet and it just like makes their day. It’s really nice to be able to help them so I’m looking forward to seeing how happy they are.”
Senior Mitchell Huckleberry, 17, was also looking forward to meeting and helping the elderly. He helped Stein with home assessments prior to Saturday.
“(I’m excited) for just helping out the elderly,” he said.
For Stadtfeld, her favorite part of winterization is seeing the pride kids take in organizing it, as they put in a lot of hours to organize and do the project. She also loves to see the smiling faces of kids jumping in the leaves and meeting with senior citizens.
“We just have some amazing senior (citizens) that call and just thank me over and over again for the service. We do our best to make sure that we help everybody we possibly can,” she said.
With the winterization project now moving past its 30th year, its clear the community loves students’ efforts. Stadtfeld hopes this will continue.
“It’s one of those things they’ve come to expect over the years,” she said. “We hope we can always come to continue to provide the service as much as we can.”
