St. Jude School, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Students and faculty at St. Jude didn't rest on their laurels after winning the achievement award. They put their knowledge into action. Today, the school sponsors a Who Put That There? student-narrated trolley tour of Fort Wayne's sculptures during the annual Three Rivers Festival. With the Fort Wayne Park Department, St. Jude Catholic School also received an SOS! Assessment Award and hired a conservation professional to assess 11 sculptures in the city's parks. As a result of the information yielded by the assessments, the statue of General Henry Lawton (1920) by Frederick Cleveland Hibbard near the school in Lakeside Park will receive a full conservation treatment. Students created a hand-drawn pamphlet made available at the Three Rivers Festival to raise public interest in the sculpture's future.

The school has since joined Fort Wayne's Guardian Angel program. As a part of this program, St. Jude classes adopt park sculptures and visit them once a year to evaluate their condition and report their findings to the Park Department. Despite this flurry of activity, the 9-, 10-, and 11-year-old students of St. Jude have not lost sight of the important lessons their projects have taught them.

"If you work hard you can accomplish anything. I hope everyone works together to save outdoor sculpture." — Hannah