This Kentucky town turned its streets into a drive-through yearbook for high school seniors

During any other year, Pikeville High School senior Brody Birchfield would have a busy spring.

He’d be playing baseball, picking out a suit for prom and talking with his friends about how to spend their last summer as high school students.

On top of all that, he would walk in the annual graduation ceremony while his mom, Diane Birchfield, would take photos and proudly show them off to friends and family.

Brody Birchfield said he and his classmates know what they’re missing.

“You kind of work your whole high school career to that last month of school, with graduation and prom and senior trip and things like that, and now we just don’t get any of it,” he said.

To make things a little easier on these students and their parents, who had nearly every spring event canceled because of COVID-19, city leaders turned downtown Pikeville into a drive-through yearbook this past weekend.

Banners with photos of Pikeville High School seniors now hang on lampposts throughout the city streets and park.

City Manager Philip Elswick said all 80 seniors were honored. He said Pikeville has received national attention, including from CNN, for the effort.

“We all love it,” Birchfield said. “It’s great to see other people care and know what we’re going through and are trying to help.”

Joe Ray Thornberry, the chairman of the Pikeville Independent School Board, said city firefighters hung the portraits from the lampposts on Friday night so “when people woke up and came out into town they were pleasantly surprised.”

Graduation can often be as important for parents as it is for students, said Kelli Hensley, the mother of Pikeville High School senior Jackson Hensley.

In addition to the closure that the ceremony provides to parents and students alike, it’s also been hard knowing that her son won’t be able to spend these next few months with his friends before he goes off to college, at Wake Forest University.

“For me, the time that he’s missed with his friends and his classmates has been the hardest thing to watch,” Kelli Hensley said.

Jackson Hensley said he feels the same way, that he’s missing out on precious time, but that the drive-thru yearbook makes things a little easier and shows students that the community cares about them and what they’re going through.

“I think it goes to show everything Pikeville stands for,” Jackson Hensley said. “It’s got the small town where everybody’s close-knitted, and it’s a place where your community and your faculty care about you.”

“It’s not just a school you go to, they really care about your education and they care about you as a person,” he said.

Mary Anne McNamee, a Pikeville resident, said she saw that another school had created a similar drive-through yearbook on the road that leads to the school.

Inspired, she passed the idea along to Pikeville Mayor Jimmy Carter.

“Graduation and proms and all of that is such a big milestone for kids,” McNamee said. “It’s an end of one part of their life and beginning of another, and these kids weren’t able to do any of that.”

High school seniors from across Kentucky have missed in-person graduations and proms this spring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person classes ended in mid-March and won’t resume this academic year.

Pikeville Mayor Jimmy Carter said hanging the 18x36 banners was one way of doing something for the Class of 2020 that has had “a rough few months.”

“We’re just very thrilled,” Diane Birchfield said. “They’ve just missed out on so much.”

Elsewhere in Southeastern Kentucky, the face of every graduating senior in the Hazard High School 2020 class is on billboards along main entrances in downtown Hazard, according to Hazard High Principal Donald “Happy” Mobelini, who is also the mayor of Hazard.

Hazard Independent Superintendent Sondra Combs said the district will film each of the 90 seniors walking individually across a stage to receive their diplomas with up to nine of their family members — but no other spectators — attending. Health and state education officials have approved the ceremony, where masks will be worn and social distancing practiced, Combs said.

“We’re a real close knit community. Our high school is ... like a family,” Mobelini said. “It’s trying times. We’re trying to do anything we can possibly do to (achieve) some type of normalcy.”

This story was originally published May 6, 2020 at 11:44 AM.