North Pines student finds way to remember father

Jessica Clifford wants her father to be remembered as a man with a big smile and a generous heart.

The 14-year-old North Pines Middle School student couldn’t think of a better way to do that than to donate her father’s death benefit to her school to help pay for the renovation of two dilapidated athletic storage sheds.

Jim Clifford died of heart failure last year at the age of 43. He also once was a student at North Pines.

“I just feel like my dad would have wanted me to do this,” Clifford said. “He was always helping everybody.”

Jessica Clifford, and her mother, Amber Haase, who is a teacher at North Pines, are using the $244 Social Security death benefit to help refurbish the two old buildings that hold equipment for softball and track on the school grounds. They also received additional donations from the school, family and friends.

The hideous bright blue paint on the current buildings is chipped, and the roofing is peeling off.

Clifford and Haase, along with grandmother Karen Goyins, and two of Clifford’s friends, Kristen Glyshaw and Ashley Boteilho, both 14, spent last Saturday painting one of the buildings and the benches near the softball fields. They also pulled weeds and picked up bags of garbage.

On Wednesday, they returned to finish painting the trim and the door on one building, and painting the softball benches.

“It just looked so bad,” Haase said.

Haase and her daughter talked about how they could spend the money to memorialize Jim Clifford, and the athletic storage sheds seemed like a good fit.

Jim Clifford also was an athlete at the middle school, like his daughter, who plays soccer, basketball, softball and volleyball at the school. She also is the student body president.

“She’s had a tough year,” said grandmother Karen Goyins. “She just idolized her dad, and this gives her a place to come and remember.”

Clifford and her crew plan to paint the other building after school next week, and they hope to eventually acquire additional funding to put new roofing on the old sheds.

“We’re hoping a contractor might have some extra roofing material,” Haase said.

If they get more donations than they need to complete the work, any leftover cash will go into a fund that helps low-income students participate in athletics, Haase said.

The school also donated two plaques to be placed on the sheds that read, “Refurbished in memory of Jim Clifford,” followed by the years that he attended North Pines: 1973-1976.

“If somebody needed something, he would always be there to help him,” Clifford said of her dad. “I think he would be proud of this.”