Editor’s note: Since people are confined to stay inside their homes, we are trying to tell the “the inside story” and invite local families to send us their “inside story.” What are you doing to cope? Send submissions to editor@event-newsenterprise.com.
With families locked inside their homes, trading liberty for health, there is so much more being lost in the pandemic, say mothers and fathers watching their children cope with the sudden loss of school.
Karen and Larry Denyer is just one affected couple, but they were served with a double dose when the stay-at-home order was issued.
Their son Cade was a star baseball player, looking forward to his final college season. In early March, Cade was on the mound to pitch his first pre-season game against the University of Rochester. Little did he know it, or could have known, that was the last game of his college career.
Their youngest son Carson was a standout trumpet player on the Los Alamitos High School jazz band. He was appointed Spirit Ambassador to the Student Association and was preparing to end his high school career with typical memory making events like senior prom, Jazz night and other events leading up to graduation.
Instead of pitching his season, Cade was given 48 hours to pack up and leave the dorm. Carson left Los Al High School one day only to learn that he would never return – as a student.
“Thinking about it, it sometimes makes me cry,” says their mom Karen. Her story is not unlike the parents of thousands of other students but hit them especially hard since their only two children were both at the apex of their educational careers.
“This is what they will have as senior memories,” she said of all affected students. They put their heart and souls into their education, said Karen, “and a pandemic ended it just like that.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Larry and I are very happy to have their home and we’re learning a lot from them,” she said. “But we would much rather see them finishing their senior years,” she added.
“We are playing quite a lot of water pong,” said Karen, sending a photo of the special table friends made for Carson. “It’s water pong, not beer pong,” she said.
“My son Cade told me I should have bought the good ping pong balls, not the cheap ones I got at Family Dollar,” she jokes. “It amazing what you can learn from your kids.”
Not to sit idle, Karen and other parents from the Los Al jazz band are busy trying to make the special tassels and cords that band members wear at graduation and are finding ways to distribute them.
Also, she said they are making signs to stick in yards letting people know where high school band seniors live.
Yes, she said, Cade will get his degree in Kinesiology and Carson may not get a chance to visit college campuses to decide what’s next in his educational career. For now, she said, he’s committed to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
Some of his friends know Carson as “Little Bucket,” she said, since he wore ‘bucket hats’ when he ran – and won – for Junior class co-president.
Since they are both seniors, “it’s hard to keep them motivated” about online learning, she admits. “They miss their classmates. They miss their schools, their activities, their friends,” she said.
For Easter, the Denyers made their two boys recreate their Easter photos when they were 8 and 10-years-old respectively. “We are having fun,” she said, though Karen admits concern about others.
“My boys are fine, but I’m concerned about those teetering on the edge,” she said.
“These are very trying times,” she said, and while she is grateful for her family’s health, she wonders about the long-term impact of what her boys, and so many others are going through.
Denyer said she, and other parents, are looking into what can be done to help Los Al students salvage some sort of graduation, but says like others, she gets a bit depressed when the gravity of what her boys have lost begins to sink in.
On the bright side, however, Karen says “at least I learned that I need to buy better ping pong balls to play water pong.”
