Palmer company steps up for education

To the editor:

Wow! What a great community we have in this state!

After an unfortunate turn of events left our Homer Middle School seventh-grade science classes with no sheep hearts for their long-awaited heart dissection lab, the extended community pulled through. Big thanks go out to Mt. McKinley Meat and Sausage Co. in Palmer!

Many frantic calls trying to round up some livestock hearts for dissection yielded nothing — until I reached Jim and Frank at Mt. McKinley Meats.

It wasn’t just that the gentlemen at this company saved, packed and gave us “biological packs” of pig heart, lung, trachea combinations, they also delivered them right to Homer Middle School’s front door.

The 2011 Region III Basketball Tournament being held in Homer last weekend brought not only basketball fans from Palmer, but the hearts and lungs for our seventh-graders to study. The educational experience for our students was great (those pig lungs can really hold a lot of air and the heart’s left ventricle wall is amazingly strong).

The example of community support for education was outstanding. Thank you to Frank and Jim and Mt. McKinley Meats, and to all of you who support our young people’s education in so many ways!

Margi Blanding

Homer Middle School

Seventh-grade science teacher