Art students put final touches on float for Sunday's parade
The Whittier Tech float will soon be unveiled with a large metal statue of the school mascot, the wildcat, as a centerpiece. It will be ready to roll through Haverhill on Sunday, Nov. 24 at 1 p.m. in the 55th Annual VFW Santa Parade.
This year’s parade theme is "Santa Celebrates Haverhill’s Hometown Heroes," and art students have been designing and painting cut-out characters that represent area heros including police officers, firefighters, teachers, doctors and members of the military — all wearing capes. Art teacher Erin Foster said she is grateful for the collaboration with carpentry students who cut out the characters from plywood, design and visual students who created a logo for the float, CAD students who printed the logo, electronics students who provided lights and the auto body department who shared their spray booths to help paint the characters.
A proud Whittier tradition for many years, students sometimes enroll in art class to be part of it. "It's really been fun. I've always wanted to work on this float," said Alexia White, a senior from Merrimac. "I've seen it every year in the parade, and I wanted to go to this school, so this is an accomplishment for me."
The wildcat mascot statue is seven-feet tall, 18-feet long, and made its first public appearance at the Whittier Tech Open House earlier this month. All sophomores, juniors and seniors in the metal fabrication program worked over the past year to build it with Instructors Chris Gerber and Steve Palmer. After being showcased on the float, it will be installed outside overlooking Whittier’s new turf athletic field.
“The school wanted a mascot and metal fab came up with a proposal,” said A.J. Espinal, a senior, of Haverhill. “It’s a big accomplishment. To know we were the ones to complete this and it will be on school grounds forever makes me feel happy because it will be seen everyday.”
Dubbed “Mega Kitty,” the cat’s design was completed in Autocad and its blueprints were fed into a Vicon plasma cutter that created the metal pieces used to put it together. Students used a power shear to cut the edges and formed the metal in rollers and a brake machine. The pieces of metal were then tacked together with welding tacks, and a skeleton framework was built inside the cat to keep it from buckling.
“It showed the students what it takes to do big projects from start to finish,” Palmer said. “Some of our kids are going to be building skyscrapers in the future.”
“I’m proud we got it done and everyone will enjoy it,” said Racheal Galicia, a sophomore, of Haverhill. “It took hard work and teamwork. Without that we wouldn’t be close to finishing it.”
The cat, who will also wear a billowing superhero cape in the parade, has a large maroon and gold WT logo on its body and gold eyes. Over time, the metal will rust and turn a uniform light brown.
