Lynn Classical students complete Walk for Hunger, raise $680

LYNN – Project Bread’s The Walk For Hunger has been a Massachusetts tradition since 1969. This year, one Lynn Classical senior sought to make the walk a tradition for his high school.Class president Christian Lopez walked with 18 other students and his team advisor, Harry Harutunian, in the 20-mile Walk for Hunger. He did the walk as a part of the La Vida Scholar program last year and when he received registration papers from Project Bread in the mail, he took it upon himself to form the team The Lynn Classical Rams and began his Facebook campaign.”I am class president at Classical so I thought I might as well just try and get a team started,” Lopez said. “I thought I didn’t want to do it as a senior class thing because we had done a lot of activities already, so I decided to open it up to the whole school.”He used the experience he gained from helping to set up events and assemblies for the school to set his project in motion. He said the hardest part was getting the word out and making sure that people registered. At the time of the walk, 30 students had registered on the Project Bread Web site.”In the morning, only 18 showed up but there were a lot of kids there doing it as a part of other groups,” Lopez said. “I found out the next day that a lot of other kids that I knew did the walk also, so in total, 25 kids actually did the walk. We set our goal at $500 and we ended up raising $680, I believe. We did the 20-mile walk in seven hours.”Harutunian said the senior class is “such a wonderful group of young people” and the small class is a group that “works like a lion in so many different ways.””Christian is systematic of a group of young people that we have in this school, under his leadership, that seem to be very caring about everybody around them,” he said. “When someone like Christian asks me, who I think is just about as fine a young man as you can find anywhere, it is hard to turn someone like that down. You can see the excitement in his eyes. It’s an idea, we’ve never done it before and he wants to make it an annual thing.”Principal Gene Constantino said he thought it was neat and the kids amaze him with the things that they do and the way that they do it.”I just thought it was a great thing that it was student initiated,” he said. “It was put together by a student. He recruited a teacher to go on the walk, to have a teacher be a part of this and they raised money on their own. Classical High School got nothing in return except the good feeling that we’re doing something for others.”Lopez said he was impressed that Harutunian was able to keep up with the students and he is grateful to everyone who donated, especially to the Wallaston family, who he said donated at least $150.”I want to give a big thanks to everyone that donated and Dr. Harutunian,” Lopez said. “He is my government teacher, he is one of my favorite teachers and he was our advisor for the walk. He stayed with us for all 20 miles and, unbelievably, he finished right with us and kept pace with us. It was very impressive.”He is also impressed with his friends and fellow classmates.”I was very surprised I found a lot of people I wouldn’t expect to do community service. You get a good feeling from something like that. It’s all for a good cause,” Lopez said.