By T. Scott Boatright
Cedar Creek School will bask in the glow of a golden moment Saturday as its long-awaited 50th anniversary celebration virtually due to the continued restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2:30 event will take place from 6:30 – 9 p.m. Saturday. To register go online to celebration21.cbo.io.
“This is our big annual dinner/auction fundraiser,” said Cedar Creek headmaster Andy Yepson. “We usually hold it in the (Ruston) Civic Center and we did not have it last year obviously because of COVID reasons and this year the Civic Center still won’t let us have something of that size yet, so we’re going to do it virtually.
“We’re going to have both a silent and a live auction. The silent auction actually started Thursday and everybody is using a link to a website from a company we hired to run this for us. All of the items are on the website and people can go now and bid on the silent auction and then we’ll have some live auction stuff also on Saturday night.”
The auctions won’t be the only part of Saturday’s events.
“We’ll have some videos of some of our founding fathers, some old teachers and alumni, people just kind of talking about the school a little bit,” Yepson said.
Golden anniversaries are only celebrated once, so there’s even even a little more planned despite it all having to be done virtually.
“We’ll have people doing some other things on video for us to watch,” Yepson said.
And while the celebration will have to be held without a mass gathering, that doesn’t mean a completely and totally socially-distanced event.
“What we’re going to do is have groups of people gather at their homes,” Yepson said. “In other words, if I wanted to be a sponsor I could sponsor eight people and the school will bring to my house a charcuterie board, some beverages, paper products, appetizers and things so that I throw my own little party at my house with small groups of people I’ve been in contact with — my friends, family or what have you — so that we can have a mini-party at my house and still watch the celebration and videos and some live things like the auctions. Instead of everybody meeting at one place like the Civic Center, we’re having a bunch of smaller parties all over the area.”