Park Cities Rotary Cheers Finished Hillcrest Project

Yeah, Linda Tunnell is pretty giddy about the recent student/rotary project to jazz up Hillcrest High School’s courtyard.

“I have the chills!” the Park Cities Rotarian exclaimed when I told her the courtyard and walkway’s Sept. 20 dedication is now on a DISD calendar. “This is like the birth of a baby. We go out there every day and pull up weeds. We’re so proud of it.”

The newly overhauled “Panther Pavilion” includes a big slab of ornamental bricks engraved for the project’s many donors. Fundraising wrapped in the relative blink of an eye, Tunnell tells me, and took little more than two months this past spring.

Dignitaries expected at the project’s 8 a.m. dedication include Senator Florence Shapiro, a 1964 graduate who’s also — according Tunnell’s trusted trivia — a former Hillcrest cheerleader.