By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

The New York Mills community lost a friendly face and faithful friend in May when 11-year-old Lucille Schik passed away after a battle with brain cancer for the second time. As the community mourns her loss, they also want to remember the mark she left on those who are left behind.

“The sixth grade girls, those that were very close to Lucille, they wanted to do something to honor her and remember her,” said Amber Rastedt, mother of one of those girls. “So they got together, there were four or five of them that were all very tight and so they decided on some sort of memorial.”

The group of girls brought the idea to Elementary Principal Judith Brockway to go forward with their idea and find a worthy memorial for their fundraising efforts. They quickly decided on a memorial bench and Brockway contacted a local bank employee, as well as the mothers of each of the girls in the group.

“We’ve been working on this project since the fall,” said Rastedt. “Kind of brainstorming how we’re going to raise money, what we’re going to do with it. They came up with a bench and they’re also bringing back the green ‘We love Lucille’ shirts, only they’re going to have angel wings on them and a halo across the top and at the bottom it will say ‘Always in our hearts.’”

Vicki Olson of Signs Plus agreed to print the shirts again and orders are currently open through a sign up sheet at the NY Mills School District Office, as well as a QR code version. Orders began on November 22 and will run through December 6.

Along with the shirt sales, the sixth grade girls decided to solicit donations from the community and put together four baskets to be raffled off during the Community Carnival on Friday, Nov. 22. By the end of the evening, the group raised over $350 in raffle donations and deposited their first fundraiser proceeds.

“They also did a coin war at the school,” said Rastedt. “So each grade had a jug and they were competing with all the other grades to see who could raise the most money. Your copper and your paper puts you in the positive and any silver in your jug puts you in the negative, so if another grade was winning and you wanted to win, you took a handful of silver, whether it be quarters, nickels, or dimes, and you put it in their jug to try and sabotage them.”

“That ran from the beginning of the month and just ended the night of the Carnival,” she continued. “Some of those jugs were so heavy we couldn’t even lift them, so those are currently at the bank right now getting counted, so we’ll see what they raised off of that. I have no doubts that they will have more than enough money for a bench and several other things if they wanted.”

Though it depends on which bench the group finally decides on, Rastedt said that she is confident that whichever they choose, they will likely end up with a surplus of funding which will ultimately go toward the finalized memorial as well as any additional funds going to the Schik family to do with as they see fit. Before the shirt sales, the group had raised nearly $3,000.

“The bench we were looking at was about $1,200,” said Rastedt. “It is a nice composite wood one with a plaque. There was also a metal one that could be covered in a green rubber coating, because green was Lucille’s color, so we’re looking at trying to do something green as well. I know there’s been talk about maybe a scholarship being started, or maybe two benches and a tree, we’re not sure, it just kind of depends on what they raise.”

Though Rastedt is happy to see the sixth grade girls raise funds for this worthy cause, she is more elated to see the care and compassion the girls have on their late classmate and making sure her memory doesn’t wane.

“I think it’s pretty cool that all these kids had such a soft spot for Lucille,” she said. “She had her tight group of friends and to see everybody’s insistence on wanting to keep her memory alive. They miss their classmate, they mis a lot of things about her, she was at basketball last year and now she’s not, just things like that, so I think it’s nice that they can continue to honor her and make sure she’s not forgotten.

“I have no doubt that we will meet our goal, if not triple our goal,” she continued, “they’ve really been successful at raising money. It’s amazing how a young lady who’s been gone since May still has so much impact on people.”