Red Devil Ready: Weekly Message

Below, I will talk about our Senior Citizen Thanksgiving. I am just going to use shoutout format, and I also am going to include a list of all of our senior citizens that signed up. I apologize if I miss a name or there are any misspellings.

Shoutout to the 120 senior citizens that came to our first annual Senior Citizen Thanksgiving Lunch. When we decided to do this, I was unsure of how many people to expect. It exceeded expectations, and I hope that it will only grow after this. The positive feedback was both outstanding and appreciated.

Shoutout to Mr. Persinger and the DCHS Band for performing at the lunch. It was the second straight week that the band was part of a community function following Veterans Day.

Shoutout to Mrs. Johnson, Ms. Tally, and the DCHS Singers. I love the consistency that the DCHS Singers have with their performances. With the way the cafeteria was arranged, it was the perfect performance venue, and they did not disappoint. Their three song performance was a perfect way to kick off our event.

Shoutout to a well organized kitchen staff that pulled off an amazing dinner with rave reviews. When I first approached Vicki Versailles, our head chef, it was with a lot of unknowns. I didn't know what to expect, but I would have been happy with any number. Vicki was a little nervous, but she was onboard and well prepared. Vicki, Renee Harman, and Tabetha Carfield were all on board from the beginning, and they were so flexible and helpful throughout the whole process. We have a solid kitchen staff that takes a lot of pride in what they do.

Shoutout to Mr. Anthony Marshall and his art students. There were so many things at play during this event. At OES, the students created Thanksgiving placemats. There were enough to put down for every senior that showed up for the lunch. At DCHS, the students made clever table settings for decorations. From all throughout the district, there was contribution.

Shoutout to Mr. Brandon Gehring and Mr. Bob Castle. Both Mr. Gehring and Mr. Castle provided golf carts for the festivities. The golf carts enabled multiple things to occur. First, it made for an easy ride to the door, as the parking lot soon became very full. Second, it kept the flow of the event moving. Third, it even allowed for a few deliveries to homebound seniors nearby. Thanks to both for letting us use them. If anything, maybe an extra one or two next year.

Shoutout to Ms. Teresa Saul. You will rarely find as helpful a person as our Computer and Speech teacher. As we tried to think of every possible detail for our event, tablecloths came up, and sure enough, Ms. Saul had all the table cloths we would need for the 32 tables that were needed for our event. She also brought in a few other convenient items to add for ambiance. On top of that, she also printed up small nameplates for each of our guests that pre-registered.

Shoutout to Mrs. Witt and her Applied Math students. I have mentioned that the Applied Math students had generated a business where they were serving homemade ice cream at school once a week. They began focusing attention to this event a few weeks ago, and they had over 200 servings ready to go. The top flavor on the menu was pumpkin pie ice cream, and by the end of the event, every serving was gone.

Shoutout to the student servers. All in all, we had a ton of students that helped, several who jumped right in after already having performed in the band or as a singer. The students staffing consisted of:

1 Doorman

2 Golf Cart Drivers

3 Ice cream Makers

4 Greeters (1 check in and coat ticket provider, 3 nametag providers)

20 Servers

Each of them dove right in to their job and helped to provide a fantastic memory for our senior guests.

Shoutout to the student body for giving up their parking lot. The day before the event, I knew we were going to have parking issues, so we adjusted. I simply sent out an email to the students asking them to park in the staff lot. It was kind of an odd site to look out in the back parking lot and see it almost entirely empty an hour after school had began.

Shoutout to Jess Allen. Our head of maintenance had another busy week. Jess was essential in the setup and clean up for our event. Jess rallied and brought over more chairs from OES, scrounged up his own coat rack, and helped me with the layout, setup, and teardown of the whole event. He works hard all the time.

Shoutout to Melissa Dreher. There were almost 120 names that were taken down by Mrs. Dreher over the past three weeks. I loved the enthusiasm and excitement that we would share whenever she would add another name. I appreciate her keeping everything organized up front so that we were able to easily communicate numbers to all parties involved.

Shoutout to Ms. Jacinta Carter, Mrs. Iris Masten, and Mrs. Jillian Springer. All three of these ladies took tons of pictures of the event. Ms. Carter took pictures for the yearbook. Mrs. Masten took pictures that were immediately posted to the district website. Mrs. Springer took pictures for the school and many that she shared with me that I will add below. I wanted a lot of pictures to document what is destined to be remembered as the First Annual DCHS Senior CItizens Thanksgiving.

2023 DCHS Senior Citizen Thanksgiving Attendees:

Atkinson, Carla

Anthony, Cathy

Ballard, Rich

Barret, Rita

Bodfield, Sharon (to go)

Bouts, Kathy

Brown, Doyle

Brown, Kay

Brown, Robin

Carman, Dick

Castle, Bob

Castle, Deanna

Cederburg, Ardith

Cochran, Dorothy

Dorshorst, Pat

Duckworth, Laken

Erickson, Gary

Erickson, Marcella

Erickson, Mary Ann

Fortin, Chantelle

Fouts, Brenda

Frickey, Chuck

Frickey, Diane

Gaines, Beverly

Groneweg, Peggy

Guinn, Gary

Guinn, Marge

Gutchewsky Mary

Haag, Betsy

Haag, Charlie

Hackney, Carolyn

Haynes, Cynthia

Heinrichs, Juanita

Horton, Darlene

Johnson, Lynn

Jones, Jim

Jones, Joyce

Jones, Robert

Jurey, Keith

Jurey, Linda

Karl, Mike

Karl, Shawna

King, Emily

King, Mr.

Koenig, Bill

Leach, Deb

Leach, Don

Leitner, Royce

Leitner, Vicki

Letze, John

Lewis, Norma

Lohoefener, Jerry

Lohoefener, Marcia

Louderback, Ardith

Louderback, Dean

Martinez, Mercedes

Matson, Cynthia

May, Roger

May, Susan

McFee, Loretta

McFee, Rob

McKisson, Marie

Meitl, Dale

Metcalf, Cheryl

Metcalf, Sid

Miesner, Jim

Miesner, Ruth

Miller, Jeanette

Montgomery, Anita

Montgomery, Ron

Neal, Tammy

Nelson, Steve

Nelson, Susan

Olson, Connie

Olson, Sue

Orr, Sarah

Pastor Pettibone

Plots, Carolyn

Plots, Jim

Raycraft Rusty

Reeh, Merry

Riffle, Rose

Robinson, Nancy

Roe, Ardith

Russ, Julie

Satella, Tina

Sater, Jan

Sater, John

Scribner, Pam

Shields, Gaylord

Shields, Shirley

Shirley, Carol

Shirley, Herb

Shobe, Janice

Shobe, Ken

Smith, Karen

Smith, Larry

Stanley, Joe

Stanley, Linda

Stanley, Regina

Steadman, Margaret

Styles, Carol

Thompson, Karen

Thompson, Larry

Townsend, Lucille

Unger, Roy

VanVleet, Pam

Votapka, Joy

Wenger, Judy

Wex, Marcus

WIlson, Angie

Wilson, Roger

Wurm, Charlene

Thank you to each and every one of you that were able to make it/and or signed up. Below is a collection of several photos that were collected.