Prospect Elementary School head cook Joan Uzunoff kneels beside second-grader Maleah Reynolds, who won one of the four blankets Uzunoff made to celebrate National School Lunch Week.
For more years than she can recall offhand Mansfield City Schools head cook Joan Uzunoff has awarded lucky students blankets she made by hand to celebrate National School Lunch Week.
She did it when she was head cook at Hedges Intermediate, then at Woodland Elementary. On Thursday she was at it again at Prospect Elementary, where she now serves as head cook.
“I enjoy doing it for the kids,” Uzunoff said, as she placed hot dogs on plates to join sweet potato puffs, pears and milk for the first lunch group of second-graders.
Uzunoff made four blankets, one for each grade level at Prospect, awarded by random drawing of students' names. But there was something new this year.
“My daughter Lorrie Bryant Tackett and her best friend Millicent Gamble, both 1989 Mansfield City Schools graduates, made 107 crocheted hat-and-scarf sets,” Uzunoff said. “They wanted to give back to the community.”
During each lunch period, students cheered the blanket winners and those whose names were drawn for hat-and-scarf sets. No one went away empty handed. Ununoff had colorful stickers for children whose names weren’t called.
Winners of the blankets were: LaCameron Fuller, kindergarten; Layla Thompson, first grade; Maleah Reynolds, second grade, and Aaliyah Underwood, third grade.