By Tricia Pursell
The Daily Item
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SUNBURY — A push for team spirit, just in time for the beginning of football season, was halted by what appears to have been someone with a razor blade who cut several hundred decorative ribbons from a railing on the Edison Bridge.
The vandalism occurred between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
“It was disheartening to say the least,” said Jill Pope, of Northumberland, who initiated the project and got parents, students and cheerleaders together to decorate the bridge Wednesday night with ribbons in Shikellamy school colors. Pope’s son is the quarterback on the Shikellamy High School football team.
Ten to 20 people spent a combined 50 hours tying on three-foot-long ribbons of navy blue, red and white. Each ribbon was double knotted and pulled tight.
Altogether, they covered the bridge’s railing with 3,000 square feet of ribbon.
They finished decorating at 7:30 p.m.
“We were trying to get the community really engulfed,” Pope said, “trying to get team spirit.”
The next day, many of the ribbons were found on the ground in pieces.
Pope said she is unsure of who would cause such destruction, whether it could be someone local or from a neighboring school district.
“You just really don’t know,” she said.
Her husband was on the bridge Thursday, trying to put more ribbon back up. It was costly to buy more, she said, and time consuming to tie them on again. Originally, one roll of ribbon was donated, and the parents bought the rest.
