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Grieving students reach out to classmate’s family
By Bob Flynn
March 8, 2010

It’s been three weeks since the death of George Rogers Clark senior Shawna Taylor in an automobile accident, but for her grieving friends, the nightmare seems much longer.

The pain of the loss has not gone away, and won’t for a long time, but the students continue to work through their grief, leaning on each other, their families and church families, and many of the teachers and school officials at GRC.

While each student deals with the grief differently, some of her closest friends decided to use the pain they were feeling to do something to help the Taylor family and to honor their friend.

Immediately after Taylor’s funeral, Tiffany Weber, while flying with her boyfriend, said she decided the friends needed to do something.

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“We were flying over Mount Sterling, and I couldn’t quit thinking about Shawna, and then I thought we should have a bake sale to raise money to help her parents,” Taylor said. “On Monday, when we got back to school, I asked Courtney and Brittany and some others, even before we got permission from the school.”

The friends hit the streets gathering ingredients to bake items for the sale and solicited help from other students and teachers to hold a sale the next night during the district basketball tournament being held at the school.

Even though they had only one day to pull it together, the students made $543 at the sale. The response from fans at the games was so good they had another bake sale at during the championship game two nights later, raising more than $650, which with other donations combined for a two-day total of $1,278.61.

The money was given to the Taylor family to help pay for a headstone for Shawna’s grave, and the students aren’t through raising money yet.

They have been selling orange ribbons at the school, and beginning this week, will be selling rubber bracelets in honor of Taylor for $3 each — money they would like to be used for a scholarship fund in Taylor’s name, said Brittany Cross.

“They have been tossing around the idea of setting up a Shawna Taylor scholarship, and we think it’s a good idea,” Cross said. “We think it should start with someone from her graduating class and be based on academics, maybe someone from the choir, and it definitely should be someone who has a personality that stands out from the crowd, because that’s who she was.”

Raising the money has helped the students deal with their pain, but they have also had a lot of help from some of their teachers.

“Some of the teachers, like Mrs. Wills, Mr. Sizemore, Mrs. Sharp and Mr. Bruce, really understand what we’re going through and they’ve been great,” said Corey Branham. “There are other teachers who didn’t even have Shawna in class, who come up to us and ask us how we’re doing and give us a hug.”

The pain is still there, but Courtney Moores said along with the tears, the students can now laugh when someone shares a Shawna story.

“It still hurts a lot, but we can laugh now too when we can think about her and remember some things that are funny. It helps to remember the good times,” said Moores. “She was always doing something funny. Like in our Pig Lab. She would always talking about how it stunk, but she would hold up its face and look at it and move its ears around.”

The students said they would also like to create a Shawna Taylor Day at the school next year, similar to the one held this year for Mckenna Hatchett, a student who died last year, where the students could gather after school and pray and share stories.

They are also planning to do something in remembrance of Taylor at the prom and also at graduation.

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