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Students Walk Their Way to $40,000 for Cary Christian School
Sporting mittens, coats and rosy red cheeks, 432 members of Cary Christian School's student body gathered at Prestonwood Country Club Monday morning to walk their way toward $40,000.
With a new school coming, Cary Christian administrators decided the best way to get the students involved with its construction was to let them participate in a walk-a-thon.
"These kids want this new school more badly than we do," Gene Liechty, director of development for Cary Christian said. "We decided this was a good way to get them involved."
Cary Christian's head master, Larry Stephenson, explained that the staff asked the children to walk nine holes of golf and get pledges for each hole. Each child had a goal of $100 and could have reached that goal by making three phone calls and asking the voice on the other line to contribute $4 per hole.
"We didn't want the kids to have to go door to door. We thought three simple phone calls would be easy," Liechty said. "And safe."
Then, on Monday morning, each student was presented a Cary Christian visor, for girls, or a Cary Christian hat, for boys, and prepared to take a brisk morning walk around the Prestonwood Country Club.
Allowing the students to walk around the "safe" greens of Prestonwood was a bonus for the staff and faculty of Cary Christian.
Liechty added that the students could have walked around a more visible place, but they wanted to make sure they were comfortable the entire time. "One of our student's grandparents is an employee of Prestonwood and said we could use the facilities here for free," he said.
When the maps were drawn up for each class, no one had to cross any streets or was in any danger of any sort. And with no golfers standing in their way, they all set off with smiles on their faces.
"This is a good day to walk," said Joy Jackson, a third-grader.
In a straight line behind their teacher, Blosson Phillips, Jackson and her classmates were excited to be a part of the adventure.
"I think this is an interesting thing to do, because we've been studying birds and we will get to see a bunch out here," Christopher Thomas said. "And, we get to raise money for our new building."
As they approached the second hole of their trek, one little boy in the back of the line said his feet were already beginning to hurt.
"What?" Jason Damico said. "I play 18 holes every Saturday with my dad, and if your feet are going to start hurting, it shouldn't be until at least the eighth hole."
Phillips smiled as she listened to her pupils talk. "We're very pleased with the response of this event. We didn't think it would go this well," she said.
By the end of the event, Liechty guessed they had generated more than $30,000 from the walk-a-thon, which would put the school extremely close to beginning its new home. He said he wouldn't know a final number until the end of the week, when all the raised funds were due.
"We have a goal to have every student, kindergarten through 12th grade, over at the new campus by the fall of 2004," he said.
Cary Christian's new building is set to go on 20.7 acres of land off Old Apex Road. The new school is planned to have 36 classrooms and a full-size gymnasium.
"We're praying that we get to break ground by the end of summer," Liechty said.
This article originally appeared in Cary News.