RV park celebrates graduation for senior
For seniors around the country, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact significant milestones, such as proms and commencements, but schools are doing what they can to make up for the disappointment many of the graduates are experiencing.
Although Lake Hamilton High School will be hosting a virtual graduation ceremony Friday at
7 p.m., Cito and Stacey Dickson wanted to give their daughter, Abbie, a “unique experience” of her own to remember in the form of a graduation parade at Young’s Lakeshore RV Resort.
“With all the chaos going on — all these seniors and graduates are kind of just in turmoil (and) we wanted to give her her own unique experience,” Cito Dickson, who is also the head boys soccer coach at Lake Hamilton, said.
“Let her experience something even if it wasn’t in the norm. Earlier in the year — right before all this happened — we sold our house and moved to an RV park — Young’s RV Park over here on Lake Hamilton. Our life kind of got flipped up that way, and it was just kind of neat. … We knew we weren’t going to have something big. The park’s fairly small. We just thought it’d be a neat idea to let her sit in the back of the car and us drive around the park, giving out little graduation parade invitations to all the campers,” he said.
The parade, which took place on May 9, started out as a small idea, but it began to grow as campers and residents showed up to show their support.
“We wanted to keep it pretty simple — make a loop around the park which literally would have taken about two minutes,” Cito Dickson said. “There was a couple that was here for the weekend, and they had an accordion and a violin, and they came out. They were playing the graduation ceremony song. The camp mom, Ms. Young — she had her saxophone, so there was like a live band or orchestra playing while she was coming through. That’s really all we had planned, you know. We just wanted to drive her around the camp and let people wave at her. The camp people — goodness, they went above and beyond. They had a live band, made banners, posters, balloons. It was really cool to see.”
Despite having moved to the park in early April, they were surprised to see the community come together to celebrate Abbie’s accomplishment.
“(They) almost adopted her as the campground daughter, and they all got together at the pavilion, started making signs congratulating her,” he said. “At a designated time, we made our loop around. The campers were in their lawn chairs waving, handing her balloons, hollerin’ for her. It gave her a moment, which I think is what all these kids want is just a moment. It was cool to see all these campers just come together, and initially we did it just to make her feel like she had a moment — a graduation moment. Then, it kind of turned into a whole camp thing.”
For Abbie Dickson, who’s heading to the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith to pursue nursing this fall, the size of the celebration was a surprise as she realized the number of people who came out.
“My momma kind of told me about it and what was going to happen,” she said. “She just kind of said she had an idea that we can do for graduation since I wasn’t going to have one. … I loved it. It was a big surprise. We just moved to that RV park, and it was just a big surprise — everyone out there, waving and cheering me on. It was really fun.”
During the parade, the residents maintained social distancing to keep each other safe.
“She stayed in the car and people just kind of put their lawn chairs out as she drove by,” Cito Dickson said. “It wasn’t a big get-together. We didn’t have a party at the end or anything like that. It was all just a drive-by and people sitting in front of their RV’s with the banners they made.”
With many students years being upended, Cito Dickson said he was glad his daughter was able to participate in “something normal.”
“With everything that’s going on — graduates not getting graduation — I thought it was kind of neat,” he said. “We’ve only been in this park for … that short period of time, and it was great to see a bunch of people in the park. I think everybody’s just hungry for something normal, so they all jumped on the bandwagon … It’s really sad on a perspective of graduates and a perspective on athletes that didn’t go through a season … so I was glad to see her have something normal. She had an experience.”