I come from this little community called McLeansville, NC. I grew up there, and my mother's family has been there or within a 25 mile radius since before the Revolutionary War. You might have heard about it earlier this year when Chris Daughtry came real close to being an American Idol.
When my mom was a student at McLeansville School, the school burnt to the ground. Her's was the first class to graduate from the new school.
Yesterday, Eastern Guilford High School in Gibsonville (not too far at all from what there is of McLeansville), burnt to the ground. It opened my junior year in high school, but I was given the option to stay put and graduate with my class. My brothers both graduated from Eastern Guilford, and both of my nieces were juniors there, and were well on the road to preparing for graduation in 2008. My sister-in-law was a teacher there, from what my mom said, her biology classroom was just a few doors down from the chemistry lab where the fire started.
Hindsight is 20-20. There were no sprinklers in the school, it was built just prior to those requirements. The ceilings had been installed so that fire was able to build up through the small space, become superheated, and fly through the building.
Demolition has already started, the building is a total loss. Kids lost musical equipment, school work, projects, extracurricular activities like the yearbook. I think about how hard it is sometimes for some families to gather school supplies together for their children once a year, and now some will have to do it all over again.
UNC-G, AT&T, Guilford Tech, all are coming together offering assistance to the students and facility, offering space and support.
My niece Jessica Deal, who's a regular contributor to the Greensboro News-Record wrote about the loss . You will find it here.
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