COLORADO SPRINGS — Thursday morning's choir class at Widefield High School was a little different for students.
Instead of vocal warm-ups, students surrounded tables filled with winter coats and clothes to tag and sort them. It's a philanthropic effort the school's choir director, Michael McDermott has helped organize four times for the past three years.
It's called "Mary's Challenge Coat Drive".
It all started in 2021 when one of her students, Mary Abiera-Lumbres died in a car crash. She was a senior at Widefield and a leader in the school's choir. Her loss was felt throughout the school and beyond and hit McDermott especially.
"Grief doesn’t go away, it literally does not go away. It just reshapes itself and you learn to use it to make the world a little bit softer, kinder and I know that that’s what she would want," Michael McDermott, Widefield High School Choir Director said.
The annual coat drive is a way for McDermott and Widefield High School to honor Abiera-Lumbres. McDermott says two other students from her class also died, Giordana Fletcher-Pettis died from an illness months after Abiera-Lumbres and in 2023, another student, Keltey Mills died in a car crash.
With all of the loss, McDermott sees the coat challenge as an important way to work through grief.
“If you knew Mary, she was one of the most loving, compassionate kids, wise beyond her years, she was like a little ray of sunshine everywhere she went and our goal was to be constructive with our grief so that we were, I guess what you would say is love in action," McDermott said.
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