COMMODORE MEDIA GROUP

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed and interrupted many things for us. In particular, students of the class of 2020 were greatly affected. Their prom, graduation, and just the end of their last year of high school, in general, was ruined. The main issue here at LHS was that students had already paid for their prom tickets, and could not get their money back as a large portion had been spent on arrangements such as decorations and food. Then the question arose, what would we do with the portion of the money that was not spent?

LHS principal Dr. Glenn Kitchens and other staff decided that for the juniors who had bought a ticket for the 2020 prom, they would get to go to the 2021 prom for free. “But for the seniors, that was a different story.” said Kitchens. “I really sat down and thought about a lot of different ideas, I talked to different teachers and people about them, and got feedback and more ideas.” Finally, they decided to give the seniors a ballot with three options as to what would happen with the leftover money. Before sending out the ballot, Kitchens sent out a statement thoroughly explaining each choice, as well as the pros and cons of each. A few days later, he sent out the ballot, with another few days to vote.

Choice number one was to have the seniors come back to a home football game and have a tailgate in the endzone with food and music. Regarding this option, Kitchens said, “You can enjoy the game and enjoy each other one last time, you know, before everybody’s kind of going out into the world.” The second choice was to keep the money in a school ledger account to use for a class reunion in the future.

Lastly, the third choice was to have something on campus to honor the class. Kitchens said, “What if we have something that can just honor them and can always be here? It never goes away? It’s like a marker, you know, to mark the event of Coronavirus on their senior year.” So it was decided that the “marker” would be a big anchor.

77 percent of the people who voted chose option three, to have the anchor. Kitchens says, “It was very exciting to know that, once this was done, this is going to always be here. They’ll come back and bring their grandchildren someday, you know, take a picture of the anchor and kind of tell them their story.”

After doing some online shopping, Kitchens decided to purchase a new, unused anchor from Blue Ocean Tackle, Inc. in Coconut Creek, Florida. The anchor itself weighs 1540 pounds, costing almost $900 to be shipped to Mississippi. The total cost of the anchor, chain, and the platform was around $4,500. Eventually, a nice plaque will be placed on the base. According to Kitchens, it may read something along the lines of ‘Class of 2020; Anchored to Excellence’. He said, “Anybody who looks back at 2020 is going to be able to find all the history they need about what that class kind of dealt with, as we all kind of ran into that big wall back around spring break, not knowing what was coming and how to deal with it.”

Kitchens concluded, “I am so proud of the class of 2020. The adversity that they faced, they just faced everything with such grace, kindness, and gentleness and they handled it so well. They walked out of here with a great education and a great legacy. And now all of that is just culminated by their anchor, that’s now here forever.”