In the space of just five days, fueled by social media, The Dalles community raised enough money — some $13,000 — to post banners downtown, like those pictured here in an artist rendering, honoring local graduating seniors.
In the space of just five days, fueled by social media, The Dalles community raised enough money — some $13,000 — to post banners downtown, like those pictured here in an artist rendering, honoring local graduating seniors.
In the space of just five days, fueled by social media, The Dalles community raised enough money — some $13,000 — to post banners downtown honoring local graduating seniors, who have missed out on the final months of high school due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It all began with a Facebook post April 8 by The Dalles resident Ruth Pullen, the parent of a graduating senior. She shared a post from one of her The Dalles High School class of 1992 classmates that showed banners featuring senior photos. Pullen said it would be nice to do the same for local seniors.
When Doug Kirchhofer, who runs the community Facebook page “The Dalles – Past, Present, Future,” saw a lot of “energetic reaction” to Pullen’s post, he said, he quickly got behind the idea and launched a Facebook fundraiser April 11.
In less than a week, all the money was raised.
Pullen said, “I’m thrilled the community has rallied together to support our seniors. I’m also surprised that all it took was a Facebook post to get the ball rolling.” She said her daughter Sophia “feels good that so many people care about her class.”
Pullen lauded Kirchhofer, saying he “led the way with promoting this idea to everyone. Doug has lots of experience with fundraising and with the banners for veterans. I’m so grateful he got involved.”
Kirchhofer founded the Fort Dalles Fourth committee, and that group has been doing veteran banners downtown for years, so he reached out to Optimist Printers for price quotes.
“When it was around $60…I thought that was a pretty achievable goal for the FD4 committee,” Kirchhofer said.
The committee bought in to the plan, Kirchhofer said, and even suspended its own mail campaign and fundraising to get this new goal accomplished quickly. Fort Dalles Displays, a non-profit organization that supports both the Forth Dalles Fourth fireworks display and The Dalles Mural Society, sent out a press release seeking donations for the senior banners.
Initial plans were to create banners for 188 graduating seniors at The Dalles High School -- Kirchhofer also has a graduating senior, Summer Kendall – and then the graduates from Wahtonka Community School were added, for a total of 212 graduates.
Kirchhofer said Optimist plans to use senior photos from the school yearbook, but if seniors want to use other photos, he asked that the photos be emailed to Optimist at matt@optimistprinters.com, and that the photos be in large file sizes, since the banners are large.
Kirchhofer said the banners would have the graduates’ name, photo and class year.
Since downtown poles where banners can be displayed are limited, Kirchhofer said the goal is to post half the banners in May, and the other half in June. On July 1, veterans banners will go up, which is a fundraiser for the Fourth of July fireworks event.
On April 13, just two days into the fundraiser, Kirchhofer said over 90 people had made pledges, and 90 percent of them didn’t even designate them for a specific senior. He said every senior will get to keep their banner.
The Facebook fundraiser generated over $5,000, and the rest of the money was collected by the Fort Dalles Displays non-profit, Kirchhofer said.
Kirchhofer explained his motivation for launching the fundraiser: “The greatest months of my school life were the last few my senior year. I could not imagine those experiences and memories being ripped away from me.”
Students were sent home in mid-March, a week before spring break, as Oregon implemented social distancing measures to slow the spread of coronavirus. The governor later announced schools would not reopen this school year.
Kirchhofer said the banner idea “felt very familiar to our Hometown USA drive that we created in 2015.” He’d started that drive, which puts up the veteran banners, when his community Facebook page had only a few thousand members, and now that it had over 10,000 members, it “felt like a doable target,” he said.
As for his own graduating senior’s reaction to the fundraiser, Kirchhofer joked, “I think it’s the only post she’s ever shared of mine. And I post a lot!”
Pullen, whose post started the banner effort, said, “I hope all of the students like the banners. I know it doesn’t replace having a graduation ceremony but I like to think that when the seniors see this outpouring of support it will make them feel a little better.”
She said her daughter is hopeful there will be a graduation ceremony and she will get to walk across the stage and receive her diploma, and “she’s also hopeful that the world will get back to normal.”
The Dalles High School Principal Kurt Evans has said he intends to have a live graduation ceremony, but it depends on when social distancing measures are removed.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.