As a student, if school wasn’t in session, I wasn’t out of bed.
Not before noon at least.
But that isn’t the case tomorrow.
The entire class of Pingree-Buchanan (all five of them – gosh I love small towns) is helping me wash and dry hundreds of winter apparel items as part of Dakota Valley and Northern Plains Electric Cooperative’s #CoopMonth Can & Coat Drive.
Meggan Domek, Jenna VanRay, Cole Diede, William Widmer, Ian Snow along with Jamestown Crew Foreman and PBK School District Board Member Steve Homes are pictured with some (only SOME) of the items the donated as part of Dakota Valley and Northern Plains Electric Cooperative’s #CoopMonth Can & Coat Drive.
Not pictured is their teacher, Chantel Grosulak.
Along with our offices in Edgeley, Milnor Carrington and Cando, the students at Pingree-Buchanan collected non-perishable food and winter apparel items to donate to families in need.
They dropped the canned goods off yesterday – and I haven’t seen my floor since.
I’m so impressed with these students. What they did is awesome. And to get a little geeky, it’s emblematic of the co-op way. The Cooperative business model arose out of the fool-hearty notion that if we worked together, we could achieve more than if we worked alone.
A small sampling of the #CoopMonth Can & Coat Drive donations from the senior class (all five of them) at Pingree-Buchanan.
Seventy-five years ago, that meant combing resources to build poles and wires throughout the countryside. Back then, it didn’t make financial sense for for-profit utilities to do it. So country people chipped in $5 a piece and in many cases, dug holes for power poles themselves. At a time when rural people weren’t considered worthy of electricity, this was an ambitious move.
These students reminded me of that yesterday. They are young leaders, both current and future. I’m thrilled to work with them tomorrow, folding hats and gloves at 8 a.m. when they should be slumbering instead.
Let’s just hope we’re done by noon. We wouldn’t want to spoil the sanctity of St. Deer Hunters Day. 