Annual pumpkin walk adds delight
The annual North Logan Pumpkin Walk is famous for its free display of pumpkin art that lines the leaf covered pathways winding throughout Elk Ridge Park. Every year, the Cache Valley community gathers to participate in the festive tradition and this year, in the midst of it all, is a group of USU MHR 3110 students who are working to make sure everyone has a safe Halloween.
“Every year the class does a service project in the community and you have complete freedom to do whatever you want,” said Carolyn Lyons, senior majoring in history.
This year, the group decided to focus on Halloween safety and compiled child information kits to hand out to parents as they venture through the Pumpkin Walk with their kids.
Inside the kits are coupons for free food, a safety coloring book drawn especially for this project and a child identification kit. Their goal, said Beau Pitcher, CEO of the group, is to hand out 1,000 kits.
According to the group’s project proposal, the kits can be presented to police and the media in the case that their child goes missing to help speed up the process of locating the child.
“When we hand them out, it usually takes people awhile to realize what it is,” said Pitcher, junior majoring in marketing. “But by time they look at it they’re like ‘oh, cool’.”
Pitcher said he is most proud of the comic coloring book in the kit because it was commissioned especially for them by Pitcher’s roommate, Zak Porter.
The group used management techniques they have learned in class to organize a group, raise money to buy the materials needed and paint the ‘Safety Heroes’ display seen at the Pumpkin Walk.
Lyons and Pitcher estimate that each member of the group, which also includes USU students Ben Dixon, Josh Christiansen, Rachel Nichol, Andy Thunell, Chase Griffiths, Jacquie Snyder, Natalie Barson and Jessica Huntsman, put in about 20 hours of work to make the project a success.
“It was just 10 random people and we’re lucky because our group got along really well,” Pitcher said.
The group will be at the Pumpkin Walk on Monday from 6 – 8 p.m. and encourage all parents to stop by and pick up a free child information kit.
“The kits are actually kind of expensive online,” Lyons said. “So this is a really easy way to make sure you have a safe Halloween.”
For more information about the Pumpkin Walk, located at 1100 E. 2500 North, visit www.pumpkinwalk.com.
–amanda.m@aggiemail.usu.edu