CANFIELD, Ohio (WYTV) – As Canfield band directors delivered awards to this spring’s graduating seniors Tuesday, they got a surprise when they stopped at Zack Perrico’s house — $2,264.
Zack’s mom, Dianna Perrico, started making protective masks from old, discarded band uniform material. Zack and his brother, Zane, put a YouTube video together about it. To date, Dianna has made almost 700 masks.
She said the effort was never meant to be a fundraiser for the band program.
“I’m very thankful for the band and the whole music program of Canfield Schools. I wanted to promote that, in a way.”
As Dianna finished more orders, she left them on the front porch, along with a tip jar for anyone who wanted to make a donation.
“I didn’t count it every day. I just kind of collected it so that it was anonymous and then at the end, it was $2,200,” she said.
While the family hopes the money can be used by the Band Parent Boosters to offset future expenses, Dianna admitted losing almost half a school year to this pandemic will take away experiences for her son and others that will be hard to replace.
“I realized very slowly that it impacted my son a lot more than I anticipated it,” she said. “His whole culmination of 12 years of hard work ended up in this.”
Dianna said having Zack’s senior awards delivered in-person Tuesday morning is a help.