The most pressing item on Huntley Project High School’s wish list is a set of sealable plastic storage totes.
The totes are needed to protect athletic uniforms and equipment during storage.
By DIANE COCHRAN of the Billings Gazette
WORDEN - Talking to Shari Tallon, adviser to the sophomore class and study hall teacher at Huntley Project High School, would be a lot easier if her cell phone would stop ringing.
But this is how it has been since the high school in this agricultural community east of Billings burned down in an arson fire last month.
Before the early-morning flames were out, Tallon and history teacher Mark Wandle had become de facto contact points for the hundreds of individuals, businesses, service organizations, and other groups offering to help Huntley Project start over.
“The first couple of days, I was on the phone all day,” Tallon said. “I get two to three calls a day still.”
Wandle quickly racked up 800 minutes of talking time on his cell phone, which he uses for school and little else.
“Everyone had a job before,” Wandle said. “Now, we’ve got another job.”
Four teenagers are suspected of breaking into Huntley Project High School and starting a fire in a classroom sometime after midnight on Sept. 18.
Two of the teens have been charged with arson. The others were questioned by investigators and released to their parents.
The blaze destroyed the high school, which serves students from Worden, Ballantine, Huntley and Pompeys Pillar.
A building that houses lower grades was not damaged.
For a month now, Wandle and Tallon have worked tirelessly to identify and track what has been given to the school and what is still needed.
From pencils and notebooks to choir robes and a piano, literally thousands of items have rolled in.
A rancher hauled a truckload of desks from Ekalaka. A graduate of Shepherd High School, Huntley Project’s biggest rival in athletics, brought in boxes of art supplies.
A check from a member of the class of 1945 arrived in the mail. A pair of ranges, for the home economics class, came from Harlowton.
Thirty-one boxes of carefully alphabetized books were shipped from Kalispell at no charge, thanks to UPS.
The school in tiny Whitewater, north of Malta, sent a check for several hundred dollars, and parents of athletes on competing sports teams treated Huntley Project players to home-cooked meals after games.
New tables, backpacks, textbooks, sports equipment and even an ice machine were proffered, and skilled workers stepped forward to set up and outfit seven modular buildings as temporary classrooms.
“When we sit down and start doing thank-you notes, it’ll be overwhelming,” Tallon said.
Wandle hopes some of the gratitude can be expressed in person.
He envisions taking students in his senior sociology class to thank children at 19 elementary schools in Billings who have been raising money in a penny war.
Orchard Elementary School teacher Tyler Crofutt initiated the war, in which students, teachers, parents and others launch attacks by dropping change n and sometimes $10 and $20 bills n into jars in each school’s office.
“It’s a huge moneymaker,” said Crofutt, who organized a similar fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Gracia Lapke, adviser to the 23-member sophomore class at Scobey High School, said she did not need a thank-you from Huntley Project.
Lapke’s students voted to send $50 from their class fund to Huntley Project’s sophomores.
“We all signed a card for them,” said class president Kole Myhre.
Chick Brogan, a teacher in Reed Point, was teaching in Malta when a fire destroyed the junior/senior high school in 1995.
Huntley Project was among the first schools to step forward to help, Brogan said.
“Huntley came to Malta’s rescue,” she said.
Brogan helped Reed Point student Lisa Ott organize a drive among the state’s Family, Career and Community Leaders of America clubs to restock Huntley Project’s FCCLA larder.
Oodles of cooking and crafting supplies, including the two ranges from Harlowton, poured in, said Ott, who is a senior.
So much has been given to Huntley Project High School that school leaders are scrambling to find somewhere to put it all until a new building can be constructed.
But as they juggle students and supplies in the ad-hoc spaces n a temporary library has sprouted in the weight room n that have become their school, the Huntley Project community can rest easy in the certainty that more help, should they need it, will be plentiful.
“This is a family,” said Pam Roberts, the school librarian. “We’re just finding our family boundaries extend a little farther than we thought.”
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