“Happy Solar Eclipse Day”

Dr. Bill Runyon ’80 put April 8, 2024, into my head back in April of 2016. He and I were heading to Big Bend for the eighth grade hiking trip and talking about outdoor adventures for students and the often incredible, lifelong impact of those trips. Dr. Runyon knew the date of this eclipse then, and he knew 4200 Country Day Lane was in the Path of Totality. 

Upper School Science Teacher and Science Department Chair Sherri Reed and I talked last spring about her team doing something special for the occasion. She took it from there, gathering her entire department twice this year for full-day planning, incorporating lessons about our Solar Car project and glow-in-the-dark bracelets, while addressing safety and significant logistics issues. 

Sherri and our JK-12 Science Department knocked it out of the park with their planning. They found ways to make the Solar Eclipse Day a fully JK-12 community event. They gave our older students staffing roles at four learning stations around the track, keeping our younger students engaged and adding to their understanding of a total eclipse and of solar power in the hour leading up to some of the most remarkable minutes of any school year ever. 

For these magical two minutes, all 1,300 students, faculty and staff were lying on the Howard Family Field with Upper School Science Teacher Dr. John Cordell and Breakthrough Fort Worth Operations Director Rudi Flores giving us updates over the sound system from the Rosacker Stadium press box. “Totality has now begun in San Antonio! It’s headed our way. Two more minutes. Keep those goggles on!” A sweet aside was our two costumed moons, Carolina Murrin ’24 and Blake Brown ’24, joining some other members of the Class of 2024 on the berm overlooking Bryant Irvin to wave at our friends at Mirabella Assisted Living & Memory Care who had gathered in their parking lot to watch the eclipse. 

Given the cloud coverage, we were so fortunate to have a view of all but a few seconds of totality. I would make the case that our slightly dicey weather actually made our experience wonderfully unique: The clouds passing in front of and around the combined sun and moon gave us sights that the totally clear skies would not have. As Dr. Cordell said, in a few years, none of us will remember April 1, 2024, or April 15, 2024, but we will remember Monday, April 8, 2024, for the rest of our lives. It was, as I told numerous Lower Schoolers at carpool that morning, the only day of my almost 40 years of welcoming students to schools, on which I had the chance to say, “Happy Solar Eclipse Day!”