The Class of 2020’s Legacy

The+Class+of+2020s+Legacy

Delaney Gaffney, Staff Writer

The 2019-2020 school year started out great for the CAD/CTE students. They finally decided to go through with a big project that was originally thought up about 4 years ago. Keegan Gaffney was one of the students in charge of this project. He thought this would be a great project for their class legacy, so they finally decided to go through with it.  

It was an extremely long process and school getting cancelled because of COVID made it difficult. But they still pushed through and got it done.  “At the beginning, all we had was an origami bear that we liked. We thought it would look cool as a statue in front of the school, since we didn’t have one at the time. There were plenty of times throughout the process where we needed to take a step back and come up with different solutions, but it’s all just part of the process. Although there was a time where we thought the project was over, and that was when COVID hit. We had no idea what was going to happen because of it which made us think that we wouldn’t be able to get it done in time. The main thing that got us to finish off the project was our connection to OSW Equipment and Repair. We explained the project to them, and they loved it! So, they offered to donate material and cut the parts we needed to build the bear. OSW then gave us another connection to HB Custom Fabrication. They were the guys who welded it all together for us. And finally, we had a natural connection to Gaffney Construction who did the whole installation for us. Without these connections, the project would remain unfinished. It wasn’t too bad working on the project while we were all in school because at that time, the bear was getting welded, which we couldn’t really help with. So, besides an occasional zoom meeting, we just had to wait.” Says Keegan.  

The whole STEM club helped with this project. But the main group was Keegan, Colton Olheiser, Tony McDaniel, Daniel Bruno, and Max Chen.  

“We were all hoping to get it done by the end of our senior year but now that I look back, that wasn’t even possible. Like I said before, the only time I really doubted the project was when COVID hit. The biggest fear was that we didn’t know if we would have time.” States Keegan. 

Even though they all had their doubts, the project was finished and executed beautifully. Everyone is also extremely grateful that all the parts and resources were donated as well.  

To break down the process, Keegan states that “first, we took the origami bear and 3D scanned it. Then we took the scan and converted it into a 3D model. From there we were able to scale it and get all the information we could possibly need. Then we took all the faces of the bear and lay them flat to be cut out. We then cut all the pieces out of steel. Then they were sent off to the welder. And after all of that, it was finally done.”  

Finally, the 9ft tall bear statue was placed on January 5th, 2021. The STEM club is extremely proud and relieved that their legacy project is finally finished and recognized.