Class of 2020 serious, vigilant about virus
It's late at night and Gabby Lucas is staring, bleary-eyed, at her computer screen.
She smiles. She giggles.
And she also cries.
The Butler Area High School senior is putting together a video, her contribution to a worthy cause.
Uplifting her classmates and her teachers during the coronavirus pandemic that has changed everything.
The video is just under four minutes long, but took Gabby four days to put it together. She reached out to 42 of her friends and fellow seniors, who filmed short segments in a sweeping message of hope.
“It was fun to make,” she said, “but it also made me sad.”
Gabby and her classmates know now with almost certainty that the things that make a senior year special won't happen for them.
No prom.
No graduation.
No spring sports.
But that doesn't mean there's a lack of good memories to celebrate. That doesn't mean more good memories can't be made.“When (the coronavirus pandemic) started, people were telling me how upsetting it was to not have prom and graduation and having sports canceled,” Gabby said. “It is upsetting, but I like to look at the brighter side.“In the end,” she added, “we're going to be OK. We're going to be all right.”It won't be easy.Seniors still have to come to grips with the cruel realities of a pandemic that has swept the world and thrown daily life into chaos.To do this they are taking the virus and the social distancing designed to starve it seriously while also trying to overcome the crushing grip of isolation and loneliness.Time to grow up“At first it was sort of a joke.”Ashley Kennedy was surprised her classmates at Butler Area High School had such an opinion of the coronavirus pandemic that was carving through Asia and Europe and was beginning to stream into the United States a mere three weeks ago.Butler senior Anna Baxter was also taken aback by the general aloofness.“When we first closed school, I think people didn't understand how serious it was,” she said. “It was easy to say, 'Let's go out to eat. Let's go get ice cream.'”Then they saw people getting sick by the thousands in Pennsylvania, by the hundreds of thousands in the United States and now a million across the world.<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fgabby.lucas.1023%2Fvideos%2F902602756864582%2F&show_text=0&width=560" width="560" height="315" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>As the calendar flipped to April, they began to take it very seriously.“I watch the news and a lot of kids don't,” Anna said. “If you take a second to immerse yourself in the news, it's valuable.”Seniors are following social distancing guidelines, imploring their friends to heed the warnings and muddling through the cruel realities of life in the time of COVID-19 the best they can.Slippery Rock High School senior Vito Pilosi took it upon himself to police his friends.When a group decided to break with social distancing guidelines to play a game of volleyball, Vito acted.
“I was like, 'Are you serious?' ” he said. “ 'Can we be smart?' ”Vito said he has always treated the pandemic with the upmost caution.He understands the desire to ignore the danger, to go out and feel normal again. He just isn't ready to take that kind of gamble.“I get it,” he said. “I just don't understand the philosophy of, 'If I get (the coronavirus), I get it,'” Vito said.“I'm very serious about it,” he added. “I wouldn't want to spread it to others. That would be the worst part for me.”Knoch senior Sammy Jo Barnes also has seen some of her classmate ignore the crisis.“We have to conduct ourselves in a smart way,” she said. “This is something that can get a lot worse if we don't take it seriously.”Slippery Rock senior Nate Gill is doing his part.While working at Prospect Pizza, Nate is taking all the necessary steps to stay safe.“I've been able to go out and have a routine every day,” he said. “A lot of my friends are sitting at home all day, and I can't imagine that. We've been careful. We take debit cards over the phone and either hand the pizza into their car or leave it outside on a bench. We don't let customers into the place. It's been very awkward.”For the most part, though, young people have been vigilant in this new age.They all have parents and grandparents and people they care about who may be at high risk.Quite simply, some of them say, it's time to grow up.“This is a respiratory disease, and I think just about all of us know someone who if they got this would be in trouble,” Vito said. “ I wouldn't want to risk destroying my lungs or anyone else's.”Even if that means staying in gut-wrenching isolation.Lost memoriesButler senior Vincent Pellegrino is waging a battle on two fronts.Trying to stay busy.And trying to stay up-beat.It's been a difficult road to walk.“I've been trying to stay in touch with friends and family,” he said. “I think the toughest part is we're losing that social interaction. I'm used to going to school with hundreds of people and being able to go up to them and talk to them face-to-face. Now, we're all a little isolated. That makes it tough to try to stay positive.”They are doing the best they can.Social media has been invaluable, serving as a means to stay connected.It only goes so far. It cannot replace just being in the same room with someone.“Social media is awesome that way,” said Freeport senior Sidney Shemanski. “We're used to using it, but we're still missing out. Even simple things like going out to eat with your friends, you can't do. I realized how much I love just going out to eat.“We just try to stay in touch all the time,” she added. “It's hard to stay close on our phones when that's the only communication.”Online classes have begun at many Butler County high schools, giving at least some semblance of normalcy.But it's not the same.They fear nothing ever will be the same again.The things that make memories — senior trips and proms and school musicals and graduations — are in serious jeopardy.“These are the things we were going to remember for the rest of our lives,” Sidney lamented. “We're going to miss out on them, on everything that makes a senior year a senior year and it's really depressing sometimes. It really hasn't even sunk in.”Seniors are trying their hardest to make new memories.Found memoriesGabby's video has sparked a groundswell of support from her classmates and adults alike.Her Facebook page, where she first posted the video Friday afternoon, is overflowing with messages thanking her for her effort.Gabby just wanted to make people smile, especially teachers, who she said, “are struggling in this time, too.”She would know. Her mother, Meghan Lucas, is a teacher in the Butler school district.The video started out as a thank you to the instructors at Butler, but morphed into a tribute to the seniors and school spirit.“I wanted to give our class this memory,” Gabby said.Gabby is trying her best to make some of her own, too.She's spending a lot of time on Zoom and Google hangouts, talking to her friends and her soon-to-be freshmen teammates on the Grove City College volleyball team.Gabby has also found herself talking to classmates she hadn't communicated with in the past.“I've been talking to some classmates who I haven't really spoken to at all until the last three or four days,” Gabby said. “I don't really fit into a type of clique. I like to be friends with everybody. I feel like that's important.”Now more than ever.Freeport senior Jarrett Heilman is doing his best to keep a positive outlook and make new memories.“You have to have a glass-is-half-full attitude,” said Jarrett, who is a standout pitcher on the Yellowjackets baseball team and has come to grips with the fact he probably won't toe the rubber again in a Freeport uniform. “Among my baseball friends, we're sad about it, but we're not mad about it. We've learned to accept it.“When this blows over,” Jarrett added. “We're going to get together and play baseball together before we all go off to college.”Jarrett said this time will in itself be a memory.“It's something we can tell our kids about,” he said. “How we can tell our kids we were OK.”
