It was the echo of his footfall that made David Cottrell cease his stride the other day.
And the reverberating scuff of his heel when he rounded the corner.
“Sounded lonely,” he said.
In the middle of the week, on a spring afternoon, the main hallway of Clay-Battelle Middle and High School isn’t supposed to sound lonely.
COVID-19, said Cottrell, who is Clay-Battelle’s principal.
The school in Blacksville, in the outlying western end of Monongalia County, is normally a textbook example of what it means to “bustle.”
Cars typically push the parking lot past full, especially during football games and
graduation.
Because it houses both high school and the younger grades, Clay-Battelle is a melting pot of pop culture.
The very air abounds with it.
Music. Fads. In-jokes and references on the edge.
And, the just-plain discourse that occurs any time young people congregate under the roof of a school building.
It’s a low-frequency hum of vitality, information-exchange and general orneriness that went away this year with social distancing after that new kid, the pandemic, showed up.
That’s why Cottrell was imploring Blacksville to do something Friday night that might run counter to the Principal’s Handbook.
He wanted people to get rowdy.
He wanted people to make noise.
He wanted every light blazing (and never mind the electric bill).
That was the idea of “Light Up Night,” a celebration set to begin precisely at 8:20 p.m., and wrapping precisely 70 minutes later.
Seventy minutes.
One minute each, for the 70 members of Clay-Battelle’s Class of 2020.
Lights in the school building were to be left on, along with the klieg-monsters that illuminate the football field and ball diamonds.
“In military time, ‘8:20’ is ‘2020,’ ” Cottrell said.
The celebration was inspired by “Shine Your Light, West Virginia,” by the state Secondary Schools Activities Commission to honor student-athletes.
Clay-Battelle, in typical school fashion, expanded it.
Music was selected for the P.A. at the football field, with its scoreboard programmed to blink, “CLASS OF 2020,” into the evening.
If you wanted to leave your porch lights on, and if you wanted to cruise past on W.Va. 7 while giving a blast on the car horn … well, that would be good, too, Cottrell said.
Teachers Staci Hatchett and Amber Copper, sponsors for the Class of 2020, arranged the evening.
“We feel bad for our seniors,” Cottrell said.
“This is something we can do for them.”
One thing COVID-19 can’t do, the principal said, is rip into the generational weave that is Clay-Battelle.
He’s a graduate. His mom and dad were, too, and they were high school sweethearts, even.
Cottrell said Clay-Battelle wants to make the Class of 2020 proud, in whatever fashion.
“A lot places say it, but we really are family out here.”
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