Ideas and memories: New Generation teams propose ways to honor family, friends

The Rotary Club of Morgan City’s New Generation Forum has been bringing high school students and their ideas for civic improvements to the public for 31 years.
On Thursday, some of their plans tugged at the heart, too.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Superintendent Dr. Buffy Fegenbush said after seven presentations by the high school teams, “but I didn’t know I was supposed to bring tissues with me tonight.”
The seven members of the Berwick High team came to Morgan City High with a plan to renovate Pharr Park’s playground in honor of Miles Liner, a talented BHS student and athlete who died in an accident in 2012.
Liner had moved on from Berwick High to LSU, where he studied engineering and worked on playground construction.
The students proposed broadening the park’s appeal with exercise equipment as well as new playground equipment, all inspired by the existing Pride Rock in Liner’s honor.
Berwick Town Council member Colleen Askew offered some encouragement.
“I want you all to know we’ve talked to [Mayor Duval Arthur], and we’re on board with whatever you need,” Askew said.
Franklin High’s four-member team proposed what they called the Tree of Fallen Angels. Small trees would be placed around the parish so people could decorate them with notes in memory of loved ones.
Each of the four team members has been touched by the death of a loved one. For Ra’Quan Prejean, the loved one was his father. He remembers getting the news of his father’s death by phone in 2019.
“Even though me and my father wasn’t close,” Prejean said, “the one thing he had was a very amazing personality, and he was very outgoing.”
The tree message would “symbolize my love for him and give him a chance to be known around the community and what a person he was.”
Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna liked the idea.
“I think this is the easiest thing to implement,” Dragna said. “And I think we should do it in different places in Morgan City, too. We’d be happy to put one at City Hall.”
Other ideas at the forum:
•Morgan City High students focused on youth programs that already exist, including the Morgan City Youth Center and the “AHEC of a Summer” effort, which introduces students to work in health care fields.
The team members threw in some ideas of their own: movie and “foodie” nights at Lawrence Park, additional pickleball courts, and volleyball tournaments at Lake End Park.
•Two of the presentations included participation in the Big Brother/Big Sister organization.
West St. Mary’s Skye Druilhet focused on monthly sessions devoted to life skills such as writing a resume’, tying a tie and changing a tire. It would also be a place to turn for questions about sensitive topics such as sexually transmitted disease, a process that Druilhet said could make students more likely to seek out adult experts.
Glencoe Charter students said Big Brother/Big Sister relationships can help younger students learn from older students, easing their way into the upper grades and making them better students.
•Central Catholic students proposed a youth voter registration drive, sometimes using resources already available from the Secretary of State’s Office.
In 2016, they said, 500 or fewer votes decided 350 Louisiana elections. Meanwhile, young people accounted for only 16% of the vote.
“We want to target the apathy of youth and let them know how important their voice is,” said team member Lucy Kincade.
•Patterson High students proposed a festival with the slogan “one world, one community.”
The event would feature food, music and dance from around the world, with a kids corner, educational booths and photo props. The two-member team presented budget plans and a noon-7 p.m. schedule.
Fegenbush and Patterson Mayor Rodney Grogan joked about fighting over whether the high school or the city government would get to host the festival.