Valentine’s Day can be a tough holiday for some people, especially if they’re spending it alone. But an anonymous high school student in Troy, Ohio, made sure that this Valentine’s Day, no one felt alone.
The student, whose identity was never revealed, delivered more than 1,500 handmade origami valentines to each of his or her peers. The students of Troy High School arrived at school to find a valentine taped to the front of their locker.
Each valentine was inscribed with a personal message: “You are loved”.
The faculty at Troy High School knew the identity of the unnamed student but weren’t about to give up the secret. However, a Facebook post did reveal that he or she had been working on the project for almost six months — since the beginning of the school year.
“This actually turned out to be 1 student who wishes to remain anonymous,” read the post. “These are individually hand-written origami hearts that this person started working on back in September. This person has been secretly storing them in their closet at home to surprise everyone today.”
It was a labor of love that took months to finish and hours to distribute.
The school principal, Katherine Weaver, said she saw the anonymous student working on the night of Feb. 13 with several helpers to tape all the valentines on the lockers.
“To have someone so dedicated to every single person in this building — that’s just an amazing quality for anybody to have, especially a high school student,” said Weaver. “I was really excited to go home and know that the students would find the hearts in the morning. I know the student just really wanted to make sure everybody had something on Valentine’s Day and that they all felt part of a collective and felt they were loved.”
The anonymous student isn’t the only one who has decided to make Valentine’s Day a day for a random act of kindness.
In Olathe, Kansas, several middle school students wanted to make the day special for every girl at their school. So, they decided to pass out flowers to all of them.
The eighth graders at Summit Trail Middle School bought hundreds of pink carnations and organized the effort with the help of their school principal, Sarah Guerrero.
The boy who arranged it?
The very appropriately-named Tristan Valentine. What happened is that Valentine and his friends used some of their own money and raised the rest of the funds to buy the carnations. They spent Valentine’s Day passing out the flowers to all the girls in the school along with some special messages, such as, “Hope you feel special today.”
“He wanted every young lady to feel special that day and accepted,” said Guerrero, speaking of Valentine. Friends of Valentine, Kyan Rice and Lincoln Holmes, helped him organize the event.
But the boys didn’t limit flowers to just the female population.
They also gave carnations to some of their male teachers, too. The final total? About 270 female students and 70 teachers were given a pink carnation.
And the boys’ generous effort was felt deeply. Guerrero said one middle school girl came up to her wearing a pink carnation in her hair. The girl told her she had always hated Valentine’s Day when she attended a previous school because she never received any gifts or cards. But now, she felt touched by the boys’ kind gesture.
The event had even further-reaching consequences.
Summit Trail Middle School only opened its doors to students in 2018. Guerrero said she felt that the boys’ gesture established a newfound sense of community among the faculty and students.
Though the other boys in the school didn’t receive flowers themselves, Guerrero said many were interested and wished they had been able to participate. Perhaps it will become a tradition at Summit Trail Middle School.
For some people, Valentine’s Day is about celebrating romantic relationships. For others, it has become a day to show love to everyone in their lives, especially those who don’t usually receive it.
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