LA PLATA — More than 100 kids were expected at the Gary Cunningham Event Center on Monday for Back to Cool, an afternoon built around school supplies, free food and a room full of people who wanted to meet them.
Backpacks and door prizes went out every five minutes. Between drawings, kids worked a cake walk, an arts and crafts room, a cotton candy machine and an ice cream trailer parked outside, then circled back through tables staffed by dozens of area service providers.
“So hopefully we have a hundred kiddos that come,” said Sara Aminirad, whose family runs the event center.
Her family bought the building roughly a year ago and renovated it. Four people run the operation.
“We have events every month for the community and it’s really nice,” she said. “We have a really good time.”
The La Plata Public Library set one of the busiest tables, giving away free books and puzzles under a “Bee a Reader” banner and handing out its schedule. Centerstone, Bott Radio Network and the Oklahoma Indians 4-H club also staffed tables; the 4-H club invited families to an Oct. 7 open house at 6 p.m. and noted that it meets the first Wednesday of each month at the Presbyterian church.
Scouts from Kirksville and Clarence troops and packs supplied much of the labor. They ran the cotton candy machine, the cake walk and the arts and crafts room, and they wore out several boxes of floss sugar doing it.
“We so appreciate them,” Aminirad said. “They’re helping out so wonderfully.”
Two of the Scouts working the cotton candy machine are Eagle Scouts and officers in the Nampa-Tsi Lodge of the Order of the Arrow, Scouting’s honor society. Cormac Nolan of Kirksville serves as lodge chief, a role covering 33 counties, and William Henry of Macon serves as lodge secretary. Local Scouts belong to the Black Diamond District and meet in La Plata.
Eagle Scout Nolan Teten and Life Scout Teagan Nolan completed the Scout leadership team serving the community at the event.
The reviews from the target audience were short and favorable.
“I have cotton candy,” said Michelle, 6.
