ACE Hardware in David City recently donated buckets and lids to Aquinas & St. Mary’s Catholic Schools for emergency supplies.
Instead of spending between $600 and $800 on the supplies, Aquinas was able to get all 50 sets of buckets and lids for $200, using money raised by the students at a spirit day.
Aquinas Response Team Coordinator Teresa Pokorny said the donated buckets will be placed in the Aquinas and St. Mary’s classrooms to be used to hold emergency supplies.
“Things like Kleenexes. We’ll now have masks, rubber gloves. We hope to put in a first aid kit. Blankets or large towels, water and then some type of food item like crackers or granola bars,” Pokorny said.
The go buckets are being created for classrooms at all levels, from pre-school to high school.
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“The purpose of the go buckets is that if we were ever in a lockdown situation where students had to stay in the room for an extended period of time, they would have the buckets,” Pokorny said.
Pokorny said Aquinas began collecting donations for the buckets last year. The community has already been great about helping out, she added.
“We’ve had several people that have donated blankets to us. We’ll start putting the buckets together and see what else we still need. One thing would be Kleenex, but that’s kind of a hot item right now with COVID,” Pokorny said.
Pokorny reached out to ACE General Manager Erin Hotovy about getting the buckets at a reduced price.
Hotovy is a 1993 Aquinas graduate. Once Pokorny reached out, he said donating the buckets and lids at a reduced cost was a no-brainer.
“We’ve done a lot of stuff for Aquinas and for the public school in the past,” Hotovy added.
For example, Hotovy said, ACE Hardware donates nail aprons every summer to the David City High School marching band to hold their charts and field coordinates.
“We’ve done round-up campaigns for Genesis House and for Relay for Life and for Blue Valley,” Hotovy said.
Pokorny said Aquinas is still in the process of filling the buckets with supplies and, going forward, the school will particularly need donations to create the first aid kits for the buckets.
Donations for the first aid kits will be particularly valuable, she said, because those will likely be the most expensive component of the go buckets. The main requirement Aquinas has, Pokorny said, is that the first aid kits must be able to fit into the 10-inch bucket openings.
Even if people can’t donate entire first aid kits, Pokorny said first aid supplies would be useful as well.
“It’s one of those things where we’ll be glad to have them in each room and we hope that we never have to use them,” Pokorny said.
For Hotovy, the go buckets hit particularly close to home – his daughter is currently in pre-school at St. Mary’s.
“She’ll be seeing Dad’s buckets for the next 14 years,” Hotovy said.
Hotovy considers it part of his duty as a community member to give back and is always looking for opportunities to do so, he added.
“We’re a business, you’ve got to make money, that’s how you keep score. But we look for avenues where we can help in other ways, with stuff like this,” Hotovy said.