They pierced, sliced and slashed with knives and then reaching in, pulled out handfuls of the stringy, slimy guts.
Left in the wake of all the stabbing and sundering that filled the Commons at Mt. Ararat High School Thursday afternoon, were 350 freshly carved pumpkins staring out from the stage, awaiting transport to Freeport.
Camp Sunshine, in Casco, is a year-round retreat, providing free respite, support, joy and hope to children with life-threatening illnesses and their immediate families. The program includes 24-hour on-site medical and psychosocial support, as well as bereavement groups for families who have lost a child to an illness.
It is the third year that Mt. Ararat’s Interact Club has organized the event, said its President, senior Lindsey Cornelison. This year students with the National Honor Society helped carve pumpkins as well as advisory classes, so the pumpkins were transformed into vessels of good will in no time. Interact also got help from Jobs for Maine Grads, PALS, Gay/Straight Alliance, Seeds of Independence and the middle school Interact Club.
The pumpkins will be used to create the Tower of Hope for the Camp Sunshine Pumpkin Festival which is set up in front of L. L. Bean, Cornelison said. The students carve hearts into them, “and it’s just one little way that we can make the people at Camp Sunshine feel better, and give them hope.”
Thursday morning, to prepare for the grand carving event, the students created an assembly line to unload the 350 pumpkins from the truck and deliver them to the Commons. The Interact Club will take them to Freeport today.
“It’s a really fun event, everyone seems to love it,” Cornelison said. “It brings the most random groups of people together,” with students of all walks of life mixed together at the tables, carving up pumpkins. “It’s community building.”
dmoore@timesrecord.com
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