Grads use cash for cause (27 May 2006)

Central senior class gives $500 for library fund

By Joe Ruiz
Staff writer

Some high school students might spend their excess money on DVDs or other personal luxuries.

Central High School’s senior class decided differently.

After selling countless T-shirts, beads, bracelets and pencils to raise funds for and at the senior picnic, the class officers made a $500 donation to the Tom Green County Library and the Beacon to the Future fund.

The fund was established to help offset the costs of the library’s hoped-for move from its location in the Edd B. Keyes Building, 113 W. Beauregard Ave., to a larger location down the street at the old Hemphill-Wells building, 29 W. Beauregard Ave.

The project needs to raise some $16.5 million to bring about the move and has raised more than $12 million so far.

Central High English teacher Kay Holland suggested the donation as the class officers debated, over dinner, how best to use the money leftover from the picnic.

“They jumped on that,” Holland said. “When that idea came up, that was it.”

Holland, the senior class co-sponsor, is a member of both the Tom Green County Library Board and the Tom Green County Friends of the Library.

“I think it’s significant that these kids looked at something the community could use,” Holland said. “I’m proud of them from that standpoint, for not just thinking of themselves.”

The officers decided to grant an extra $500 scholarship for a Central senior — beyond the one given at the picnic — and sought to help the community when they decided on the library donation, said senior class Vice President Amanda Duryea.

“If we can do it, (the community) can do it,” Duryea said. “It’s going to be a huge, new, great library that anyone should donate to if they could because it’ll be there for years.”