52 WEEKS. My suggestion for the "summarize in one word" project was "goodwill," an idea that occurred to me that evening,and which was reinforced by the continued kindness of people in DeKalb and Sycamore and elsewhere in the state. Thursday afternoon included a 3 pm balloon release organized by Huskies United.

Northern Star photo by Sean Curl.

The release included more balloons than organizers had planned for.

Huskies United secretary Ryan Sego said they weren’t supposed to have 500 balloons originally.“We were going to have just five balloons, because we didn’t have enough helium,” Sego said. “But an employee from Airgas donated us enough helium to have 500 balloons, which was really great of him.”

The weather cooperated: unlike last year, when we had already lost time to more than one snow day, and when the snow hung around for all of January and February and well into March, we've had a stretch of above-freezing temperatures including a few records in the 50s and 60s. The Avalon Quartet was able to present its February performance: Beethoven, Ives, and Janacek.

The Northern Star put together a special issue (the link activates a .zip script). As part of their coverage, they asked the families if they'd be willing to remember their children, and obtained responses (in the order the website provides them, Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia, Julianna Gehant, Ryanne Mace, Dan Parmenter.) Their recollections tell of internship and study-abroad opportunities, practice teaching, and student organizations, in short, great potential lost.