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HUGHESTOWN — Clare Hogan sure looked ready for her first day of school — colorful garb, new backpack with a handbag, even a name tag.
Except she was at the Pittston Area Primary Center to see her brother go back to class. Clare gets her turn next week when pre-school starts.
“She wanted to look the part,” her grandmother, Mary Theresa Chisdock, laughed as a stream of students returning for the first day Monday headed inside. A closer look revealed Clare’s “name tag” had no name, or even space to write one. She had proudly slapped on the sticky outer rectangle left when her brother had peeled his name tag from inside it.
Silas Perez seemed a bit reluctant to get started, until one of the teachers told him “We have a whole new shelf of dinosaur toys for you to play with.” That got him grinning, and he soon rushed inside.
“He likes dinosaurs,” mom Yashira laughed.
The primary center houses about 450 students in kindergarten and first grade, Principal Art Savokinas said as he flitted from the front, where parents dropped off students, to the office to make announcements, to the back where each bus stopped to unload. “I love this place,” he added. “I call it ‘Hatchy Milatchy.’”
That would be the once famous local children’s show hosted by “Miss Judy,” and it would also be Savokinas dating himself — the show went off the air in the late 1980s. “I’m 46,” he laughed. “I grew up with it.”
Jhett Lieback looked eager to get back to work at first, but when mom Akeizhia Copp gave him a public hug and kiss, he turned into, well, an embarrassed 7-year-old. Scowling, he walked to one of the doors and pressed his head into the glass. “Turn around so I can take a picture,” mom insisted. “At least pretend like you like me!”
Not to worry, he did turn around and beam a big smile for posterity’s sake.
One of the first faces the youngsters often saw was security guard John Hindmarsh — dressed in black togs, day-glow yellow vest, and shiny white sneakers. “My wife takes care of me,” he noted.
Some students rushed up to him and greeted him like a favorite uncle they hadn’t seen all summer.
“I’m doing this 12 years,” said Hindmarsh, 70. “It’s hectic the first couple weeks, but I love every minute of it.”
