Fort Meade High School Seniors Create Positive Message With Mural

FORT MEADE, FL — Fort Meade Middle-Senior High School seniors thought they would have the best times of their senior year but those plans were taken away in March by the coronavirus pandemic. The graduating class of 2020 wanted to make the best out of bad times, and leave a positive impression to underclass students that no matter what unexpected things may happen, you just have to stay positive and push through.

Four senior students — Diana Garcia, Riley Grant, Halee Shaver and Jennah Bickell — got together to create a dark mural with an uplifting message on one of their high school building's walls.

Senior class president Garcia had the idea to make a mural when schools switched to online learning from home. She reached out to their principal, Amy Hardee, and asked if it would be possible for a small group of students to meet at the school and work on a mural project that represented their senior class. Because of health guidelines, Hardee said they could only do it with parents' permission. Parents agreed, and the local Ace Hardware store donated paint and art supplies. Hardee also bought paint and supplies for the project.

"We had to make light of the situation, and we also had to remind underclassmen of things that can happen that will mess up your senior year. But you just have to stay positive and find something positive along the way and focus on that and just ride it until you're done," Garcia told Patch.

Grant contributed to the dark design idea of the mural to include a gas mask and pick axes since they are the Fort Meade Miners.

"Everybody else contributed with all the germs and toilet paper to make it a bit more lighter and funny," Grant said.

Hardee said she supported the students' idea for the mural even though it included a gas mask and toilet paper because this is a historic time, and those symbols represent the end of their senior year.

"Diana and I have collabed multiple times, so to us this was a quick process due to the plan — it was just the matter of fact of what time period that we had with it," said Bickell.

Shaver said being part of the mural project helped lift her spirits after the sadness of missing part of her senior year traditions.

"At first, I was very down about it," Shaver said. "I was very sad and soon after I was like, 'Halee, you gotta pick yourself up because if you go throughout this process being negative, it's just going to make you feel bad, it's going to make everyone around you feel bad,'—so positivity in this time has really helped me and I'm pretty sure everyone else."

It took the four students who collaborated for this project almost a month to create their mural project.

Seniors were happy to have a goodbye moment on May 21 when they showed up and signed the wall while following health safety guidelines with their graduating class.