By Liz Beavers
lbeavers@newstribune.info
tribune managing editor
SHORT GAP — It was a chilled-to-the-bone kind of night in November.
The kind that makes you want to retreat to your home and curl up by the fire with a steaming hot cup of cocoa.
Not everyone has that luxury, however, and 14 students from Frankfort High School found that stark reality out for themselves when they spent the night in the middle of the school’s football field with nothing but cardboard boxes for shelter and a small fire in a barrel for warmth.
The students were participating in the annual “One Homeless Night,” in which they spend the night out in the elements in an exercise which helps them better understand the conditions under which our nation’s homeless struggle to survive.
An eye-opening educational experience for the teens, it is also a fund-raising opportunity through which the students raise money to be contributed back into the community.
According to faculty advisor Amy Cowgill, One Homeless Night is just one of many service projects which the teens take on as members of Students Making an Impact on the Lives of Everyone —SMILE.
“I started this club about five years ago,” she explained. “The school didn’t have any service group and I thought it would go well here.”
Student Andrea Kratochvil said the organization gives students an opportunity to become part of a service-oriented group.
“There are people out there who want to help, but maybe they don’t know how to go about it,” fellow club member Ashley McCloud-Grabenstein explained.
Brittany Armentrout noted that “it’s a lot easier when you do things in a group.”
“And it makes it more fun,” Kratochvil added.
Some of the service projects which the 30-member club has tackled have included cleaning up Camp Minco prior to Outdoor School each year, and launching a drive to collect items for a care package for a Frankfort graduate currently serving in Iraq. That project, Cowgill says, has grown to include a number of other soldiers from the area who will receive packages from the group.
On Dec. 20, the busy students plan to help wrap Christmas gifts at the Country Club Mall for the benefit of Toys for Happiness.
It is the yearly One Homeless Night, however, which has had an extra special impact on the students. So much so, in fact, that Kratochvil and others participate year after year.
“How fortunate we are,” Armentrout said, “that as soon as 6 o’clock hits, we can go home. People who are homeless can’t do that.”
Cowgill said the students tried to keep warm by pulling their cardboard box shelters close to the fire, but it provided little comfort.
“We frosted over. By morning it was 27 degrees,” Kratochvil recalls.
Despite the bone-chilling temperatures, however, the students feel the experience was well worth it. They were able to raise over $700, which they split between Warm the Children and Toys for Joy.
“We’re going shopping for toys today,” Kratochvil said Wednesday, with a smile on her fact that comes only through knowing you are making a difference in someone’s life.
