The Big Day at Stratford

A lot of students worked in the yards of various places around the school. This group of students are apart of the Health Occupations Students of America and they spent their morning planting colorful flowers for the residents of a retirement community. (Photo: Taylor Brittain)

As I stood in the pouring rain, with the wind blowing like crazy, and hundreds of students going even crazier, I thought for a moment that our worst-case scenario had come true. On Saturday, April 25, at about 7:20 a.m., the simple factor of weather threatened to make useless the countless hours of planning and preparation done by my team and I. We were the leaders of the Second Annual Stratford High School Big Day, for which close to 600 students woke up early on a Saturday morning in order to serve the community.

The Big Day was created last year, by then-Student Body President (and my sister), Katherine Kennedy, Head Student Council Advisor, Mary Jackson, and then-Head Principal Christopher Juntti. They modeled The Big Day loosely after Texas A&M's "The Big Event," which includes around 20,000 student participants.

Although it was originally intended to be a day for the many student groups on campus to come together and serve on different small projects, The First Annual Big Day took on one main, enormous project: painting green a massive shopping center wall that is adjacent to our practice fields. Around 500 students participated last year, and students also helped fix up a local business, do yard work for the elderly, and more. 

The Health Occupations Students of America organization at Stratford chose to volunteer at a local retirement community where they helped clean up the garden and chatted with some of the residents. (Photo: Taylor Brittain)

This year, Emily Gex, Molly Murphy, and I took on the task of co-chairing the event, and we met frequently with Student Council Advisor Lauren Yonkin, as well as Mrs. Jackson, starting in January. Our first order of business was finding sponsors for the event. We called and visited many local businesses, organizations, and families, and Chick-fil-a, Raising Canes, MidSouth Bank, Frost Bank, Stratford PTSA, the Goodson Family, and many others made donations.

After that, we had to make sure we would have enough volunteers, but that ended up not being an issue at all. We were all blown away by the willingness of so many Stratford students to sacrifice their time in order to serve their community, and we ended up with nearly 600 student participants!

While we focused our efforts primarily on a single project last year, this year, we asked every Leadership Council member, who comprise the group of the leaders of every Stratford club and organization, to pick their own service project. National Honor Society decided to plant a therapy garden at Bendwood Park, Yearbook and Newspaper students ran a short journalism workshop for Thornwood Elementary students, Football mulched all of the trees on campus, a few groups did yard work for the elderly, and some groups helped local businesses with small jobs, just to name a few.

Some school organizations left the campus while others stayed and helped around at school. Senior Ruth Currier and the tennis team stayed at SHS and painted benches the Spartan green color. (Photo: Taylor Brittain)

Emily, Molly, Mrs. Yonkin, and myself were up at school until late on Friday evening working on final details, and we came back at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday to set up. We worked for over an hour getting things ready outside, before the weather began to turn on us. The canopy tents that sponsors had provided for us began to fly like kites as the wind picked up and the rain came down. Thankfully we had plenty of students to help us move our things inside and out of the rain, but for what seemed like forever, we had no idea how the rest of the day was going to go.
The weather quickly became dangerous to the point where our Building Principal, Danny Gex, and our Athletic Director, Eliot Allen, had to keep guard by the cafeteria doors to make sure no one tried to go outside in it. And while some groups were volunteering at Stratford, the majority were leaving campus to volunteer somewhere else, where many of them would be working outside.

I remember sitting down with the other co-chairs and trying desperately to figure things out. Which jobs were still okay? Which jobs would we need to switch? And finally, what happens if it never stops raining?

Juniors Collins Rush and Maddie Dyer and senior Keeley Flinn helped their fellow Thespians paint the decorations for Family Point Resource center. (Photo: Taylor Brittain)

Fortunately, we didn't have to answer all of those questions, as we got word that the storm was about to pass and we would be clear to continue on in about 20 minutes. So we resumed with our original plans: we gave a short speech, our DJ, Junior Chris Hachtman, played some music, and once we were given the all-clear, we sent the students out to do their jobs. Almost every single group ended up being able to do the job that they had originally planned to do, despite the terrible weather at the beginning. 

In the end, close to 600 students and 100 adult volunteers did yard work at four houses, gardened and spent time with residents at a retirement home, fixed up a neighborhood pool, created 2000 care packages for kids in need, created and distributed 40 care packages for the homeless, mulched 150 trees, cleaned and revived two courtyards, aided 20 local businesses, and more.

It was one of the best experiences I've ever had, and it proved to me once again how remarkable Stratford is - I don't know of a single other high school where something like this happens, where over a quarter of the student body is so dedicated to their community that they are willing to give up sleeping in on a Saturday in order to volunteer. I also couldn't have had better partners in planning and running the event.

I couldn't be more excited to see the tradition that was established this year continue to impact the community for years to come and spread our truly unique Spartan Pride throughout the community!