Windham High Honors Society bottle drive boosts scholarship funds

By Daniel Gray

New Year’s Day this year was a special occasion for many globally. It's the start of a new beginning while the negatives of 2020 are sent off. On Jan. 1, many were celebrating in their own unique ways and Windham High School's Honors Society had their own special way to celebrate 2021 as well.

The Windham High School Honors Society is a group of well-rounded teenagers who are dedicated to better helping the community and individuals in it. Every year, they sell beautiful poinsettias during the holidays to raise funds for scholarships for selected classmates, and this year was no different. They sold their poinsettias but felt like there needed to be an addition.

Holden Anderson, the president of the Honors Society and a WHS senior, came up with the idea of creating an additional bottle drive to further raise scholarship funds.

Anderson played hockey in middle school and back then as a fundraiser, the team would go door to door after New Year's asking if people wanted to donate their empty bottles. Thinking back on this, Anderson brought up the idea to try something similar, but conducted at the high school.

His idea took off and soon the Honors Society vice president, Chloe Allen, was announcing it online to bring more attention to the event.

Asking why she promoted the event online on Facebook, Allen said she posted it on the Windham Maine Community Board Page because she though it would help significantly.

“I felt that we have a great community, and that the Windham residents would come help out our group,” Allen said. “I have been a part of the community board for a decent amount of time and knew how many people were in the group. I just knew that we have such a good community that would hear our call for help."

Their group leader and WHS history teacher, Brandon Champion, helped arrange everything and made sure everyone was safe, was practicing social distancing and not overwhelmed by the amount and sheer numbers of the glass bottles they were collecting.

During the drive itself, Champion drove back and forth to Patman's Redemption Center to help create space within the area they were working at the high school. 

They group collected numerous bottles, but their efforts were well worth it, Champion said. All told, the Honors Society earned a total of $550 through the bottle drive that will go toward college scholarships for WHS students.

Everyone connected to the bottle drive said that they were amazed when the news was broken of just how much they had earned through the initiative, especially the honor's society leaders. 

"I had no clue that we would get that much money, I thought $100 would be the maximum amount,” Allen said. “But everyone had bottles to give it seems, and a lot of people heard about our event."

Anderson agreed and said he was grateful to everyone who participated either by volunteering to help or for those who were willing to donate bottles to the effort.

“It's definitely a great feeling and I'm glad I was able to be part of the process,” he said. “College obviously isn't cheap, so even that amount can go a long way in helping a peer have the best experience possible in college."

The Windham High School Honors Society has some more plans for 2021 to do further community work and fundraisers for college scholarships and Anderson said that they will announce those initiatives to the community prior to them being conducted. <

Community helps solve photo mystery on Pettingill Pond

Steve Herbert of Windham is happy to be reunited with
several photos of himself that were left behind years ago 
when his family moved out of their home on Pettengill
Pond. The home's current owner, Matt Brooks, found them
in 2017 replacing a heater and tracked down Herbert and
gave the photos back to him. SUBMITTED PHOTO   

By Daniel Gray

Back in 2017, Matt Brooks discovered something a bit peculiar in his new lakeside residence on Pettingill Pond in Windham. He and a friend were replacing an old heater and, upon moving it, Brooks discovered photographs of a child from the 1960s or 1970s.

There was no name or date on the back of the photograph, and it was housed in a golden frame along with another photo of a baby. Brooks then launched a long and heartwarming journey to find the owner of the photographs and return them.

At first, Brooks did attempt to find the child in the photo through the internet. He had posted a question on Facebook seeking answers to who might be in the photo, but there had been no bites or clues rendered by his friends as to who the photo owner might be or to the identity of the child depicted in the photo.

Not being able to learn who the photos belong to, Brooks tried to donate the photo and frame to Goodwill later in 2017, although fate had something else in store for him and his fiancé.

When attempting to put it in the donation pile at Goodwill, a sign notified them that the thrift store had frozen pipes and a broken door. Brooks interpreted that as bad luck omen and scrubbed his attempt to donate it.

Brooks and his fiancé then decided to hang the frame along with their own family photos in their home as a good luck charm, hoping that one day they would be able to successfully reunite the photos with their rightful owners.

Three years later in 2020, Brooks was finally able to put an end to the mysterious photos hanging on his wall.

"Originally, I posted it on another Facebook page, but enough people encouraged me to try the
Windham Community Board Facebook Page again,” Brooks said. “Giving this another go, people had it solved within 15 minutes."

Posters suggested that a local man named Steve Herbert, who had been living in that house back in the 1970s might know who was in the photographs.

With the community's help, Brooks reached out to Herbert and, after years of mystery and intrigue, the photographs were finally returned to their rightful owner.

Herbert said that he was unsure about how any of his family photographs had slipped behind the water heater in such a way, when he lived in the house, but he was nevertheless overjoyed when he was alerted to the post on the Windham Community Board on Facebook by his friends.

"I had about 10 text messages screenshotting the post,” Herbert said. “It was pretty special."

When he was growing up, Herbert recalled that a number of issues led to many family photographs and memories being discarded, and he grew up without many photographs at all.

Herbert said that now that these photographs have been rediscovered thanks to Brooks, to him and his family, these photos mean a lot and they'll be cherished for a very long time. <