Horizon Students Add Warmth To Winter Thousands Of Articles Of Winter Clothing Collected For Distribution At Valley Center

Maybe it was the pizza. Maybe it was the ice storm.

But something lit a fire under this year’s collection of cold-weather clothes at Horizon Junior High.

Students at the school collected a whopping 3,276 pieces of clothing for distribution at the Valley Center.

The students gathered coats, hats, gloves, sweatshirts, boots, jeans.

Last year’s drive at Horizon reached 640 items of clothing.

Earlier this week, students helped move bags of clothing from the school’s library, out to pickups, vans and station wagons. But first, they climbed up the pile, plunked themselves down and talked about why the drive succeeded so wildly.

“Pizza!” offered some of Anne Cunningham’s students, from their seats atop the huge pile of garments. Cunningham’s 28 seventh graders collected the most clothes of any class in the school: 530. They won their pizza as part of a class-to-class challenge.

“We started collecting three days before the ice storm, and it was kind of lukewarm. But when the kids got back to school, wow…” said Skip Eagle, who teaches the leadership class that organized the drive.

When some students gave money rather than clothes, ASB president Kylie Meyer and others took the $58 and bought 103 pieces of clothing at Value Village.

Other kids called relatives who were coming over for Thanksgiving dinner and asked them to load up a give-away bag.

Others simply turned to their mothers, their fathers and their basements.

They turned up everything from a real sheepskin coat, to a green suede jacket with fur collar, to more parkas, sweaters, sleepers and jackets than would fit in Santa’s sleigh.

Valley Center director Barbara Olson estimated the students’ donations would be disbursed through the center’s clothing bank in about three weeks.

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