Thirty-four North Tapps Middle School students are working to make Allan Yorke Park a little bit safer by Memorial Day.
The summer of 2012 took a tie for the deadliest summer on Lake Tapps following the drowning deaths of two men and a Bonney Lake High sophomore. So when Lorrie Nelly’s seventh grade class was choosing a public improvement undertaking for the Project Citizen contest, it was no surprise cold water shock awareness came out on top.
It took two weeks, Nelly said, for one of 20 broad ideas to develop into a full project proposal that would beat out two others for the majority of student approval.
The undertaking Nelly’s students approved was a brick memorial to the lake’s drowning dead that would include a stainless steel plaque in their commemoration, and flashing LED lights to warn swimmers of cold water danger. The memorial’s masonry will be complete by Memorial Day, May 27.
Midwifing the idea into a deployable project has been an ambitious undertaking, according to Nelly.
“We put calls in to the mayor (Neil Johnson) and chief of police (Dana Powers),” she said. “Because we are talking about 12 and 13 year olds, we wanted to find out how a proposal like this would be received.”
Both personally approved of the students’ idea, as did Pierce County Councilman Dan Roach. Roach was one of the judges of the regional Project Citizen competition, and he was “very pumped” about the presentation, Nelly said.
“I was blown away,” Roach said. “I would have expected that level of work from high school students. The presentation was very well done, very thorough and, obviously, very current.”
Not content to stop at their ideas, the project’s reality has been made possible by students who networked with professional adults. It was a student who contacted the mason, from Port Orchard, who is donating his labor to the brick memorial. Another student talked to Nelly about an electrician in the family who might be interested in undertaking the LED warning lights, though she said discussions were too early to call anything definite.
North Tapps ASB continues to fundraise for the stainless steel plaque memorializing the drowning victims and warning swimmers of cold water dangers. Interested donors can send their contributions to North Tapps ASB, 20029 12th St. E. in Lake Tapps.
