Greensburg students go on a ‘Royal’ field trip

Connecticut school, Kansas City Royals pitch in to make students’ day

OLATHE, Kansas/June 6, 2007—Heart to Heart International Inc., a leading global humanitarian organization, announced today that select students from Greensburg High School will be given the royal treatment today at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., thanks to students halfway across the country and the Kansas City Royals.

After an F5 tornado ripped through their small farming community and damaged the local schools, Greensburg students and their families were left to pick up the pieces of their shattered town.

But someone was thinking about their plight. As news accounts filtered across the country, students of Darien, Conn., High School decided they wanted to help.

“It’s really an endearing story about how people want to connect to a world in need,” said Pete Brumbaugh, Heart to Heart’s vice president for marketing communications. “For Darien High’s students, teachers and administrators, Heart to Heart International was their humanitarian connection.”

Jennifer Degenhardt, a foreign-language teacher and student government adviser at Darien High, contacted Heart to Heart after learning about the organization’s efforts in Greensburg from the Fox News affiliate in New York City.

The student council created a “Greens for Greensburg” campaign and raised more than $1,000 for the relief effort. Their idea was to give Greensburg students an “extreme field trip,” Degenhardt said.

They have arranged for a charter bus to drive the students from Wichita to Kansas City this morning.

The Royals will then host the students in a dugout suite. They are slated to take the field during the national anthem and have reserved seats off the first-base line.

The Kansas City Royals have committed $50,000 to Heart to Heart’s tornado-relief efforts in Greensburg and are exploring ways to rebuild the high school baseball field.