Following tradition, band seniors of Room 63 wanted to give something back to a program that had housed some of them before school, during school, and after school for almost four years.

Senior Stephen Merriott planned to clean and organize the band room the weekend of April 13 and 14. Merriott approached Math teacher Steve Willott about a week ago to ask if Willott could act as the official “supervisor” of the project.

He agreed.

Band kids donated their time, money, and supplies to spruce up the band room as much as they could from 12-10 p.m. on Saturday and 1-6:30 p.m. on Sunday.

“It just struck me as ‘This is the way the band kids are,’” Willott said. “The kids just work like a colony of ants. Everyone just knows what needs to be done and they get right to it.”

There was a hiccup in the plan though. The surprise no longer remained a surprise when there was a scheduling conflict and the custodians couldn’t open the band doors for the seniors. Even though senior band member Amber Rollins called her step dad, school board member Eric Seider, to request that the custodians open the doors, not even Seider could prevent the band members from eventually spilling their plans to sponsors Jeffrey Moorman and Paul Ahlemeyer when they asked them to unlock the doors.

“The beginning wasn’t that fun because we didn’t see much progress but towards the end, it was really fun to see how we’d progressed,” Merriott said.

According to freshman Zoe Willott who has Moorman first hour, one of the first things Moorman said when he walked into first hour was “Oh, there’s color in this room.” She also believes the appearance of the band room improved markedly.

“I think it’s more inviting now because it’s a lot cleaner,” Willott said.

That was one of the goals of the seniors this years — to leave the place better than they’d found it.

“Normally everything is overworked, overcrowded, and overused,” Merriott said. “Usually that causes stress and so we really wanted to take out the stress and leave the place clean.”