TERRACE PARK, Ohio — Sixth graders at Terrace Park Elementary School want to raise $3,000 to place a defibrillator at Drackett Field, a popular neighborhood sports field.
“We all started this because of Damar Hamlin’s incident, and we wanted to be ready for any circumstances,” said Meryck Bogle.
Bogle's teacher, Ann Williams, said she likes to talk about current events with her students.
“We just love to bring the real world into the classroom and whatever is going on in the world we love to talk about it, read about it, and so the Damar Hamlin incident just really resonated within this class,” Williams said.
Hamlin collapsed at Paycor Stadium during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals in January.
As a class, they read more articles about what happened to him and it sparked an idea. The students have an AED in their school, but not outside at Drackett Field. Many of the students play baseball, soccer, lacrosse and football on the field.
“What happened to Damar Hamlin can happen in those sports,” Corbin Heis said.
Several of Williams’ students didn’t even know what an AED was until a few months ago.
“I just heard that they used it to help Damar Hamlin save his life and I heard that it happens to many people, so I thought it was a great idea that we could put it down at Drackett Field, and so if we ever needed it it would be there, but before then I had no idea what a defibrillator was,” Graham Schumcher said.
Mia Demain said January was when she first learned of it as well.
“When somebody’s heart stops it will shock someone’s heart back, so it can beat again,” Demain said.
Once they learned that AEDs are a life-saving device, they wanted to make sure one was available if needed. The students decided to organize a fundraiser where they will sell several things including cookies, lemonade, t-shirts, cotton candy and raffle FC Cincinnati items.
“It’s literally a dream come true. This is what we teach them is, 'I’m going to guide and I’m going to show you a few things, but then what can you do,'” Williams said.
One thing the students have learned so far is that planning an event takes a lot of work.
“It’s been a lot but all of our groups have mainly planned out what they wanted to do and what things we were going to do to make it cool and special for the event and then we started planning like what kind of costs and what supplies we would need,” Avery Gibson said.
The fundraiser is April 26 3:30-5:30 p.m. in front of Terrace Elementary School.
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