Tiny town with a big heart supports UW band after crash

GEORGE — The town of George has shown once again that it is a tiny community with big pies and even bigger hearts.

Various employees of the Quincy School District and members of the George community rallied late Thanksgiving night to support over 250 members of the University of Washington marching band who were driving to Pullman for the annual Apple Cup football game when a bus carrying 56 students rolled off of the icy highway.

Quincy High School interim principal Marcus Pimpleton, an assistant with the UW Husky Marching Band, was on one of the six buses that made up the marching band’s caravan, and he jumped into action to find a place that students could bunk down and regroup. Pimpleton and Quincy School District Superintendent John Boyd decided on George Elementary School even before first responders arrived on the scene, Boyd said.

Carol Leibelt, head custodian at the elementary school, drove out to open the facility’s doors and warm up the school before the band members arrived, staying well into the morning to help manage the building amid the influx of shaken students needing food and a warm place to gather themselves.

A local radio station helped amplify the call for support, but most volunteers organized by word of mouth. With little to no formal announcement to the 500 residents of the tiny town, local residents poured out of their homes to bring food, blankets and emotional support to the students sheltered at George Elementary School.

The rural area has few options for food late at night on a holiday, so many cleared their own pantries and fridges in order to provide warm Thanksgiving food to the UW students. Sam Krautscheid arrived at the school in full Washington State University gear with pies in tow, not expecting hundreds of students to be stationed at the elementary school.

“I realized I didn’t bring enough,” Krautscheid said with a laugh. “So we cleared out our fridge.”

Lisa Karstetter and her family had also gathered up food and blankets from her home to bring to the elementary school, but realized, much like Krautscheid had, that there were more students than supplies.

With no open grocery stores in the area, Karstetter and her mother, Shirley McCullough, beelined to the only open restaurant in the area, a Subway a few blocks down. Because there was only one employee on duty for an otherwise sleepy night, McCullough put on gloves and helped put together sandwiches and salads while Karstetter cleared entire shelves of chips and cookies and shuttled the food to the school.

Other community members arrived with full turkeys in tow. Karstetter said that the only thing students didn’t have in large quantity was bread, so volunteers were putting food in tortillas and whatever else they could find.

“George is an incredibly tiny town, and yet we fed them all,” Karstetter said. “It needed to happen, and people around the area made it happen.”

After the students had been fed, Karstetter drove to Columbia Basin Hospital in Ephrata to pick up four more students who had been recently discharged. The four had suffered various injuries from broken glass and the impact of the rolling bus, and after Karstetter realized the students’ belongings were still stuck on the bus, she helped buy clean clothes and ice packs for the students.

David Day, assistant facilities director for the district, and his wife, Georgia, kitchen manager at Quincy High School, drove a truck the district uses to transport food supplies to the scene of the accident, waiting until 2 a.m. for police to conclude their investigation so they could retrieve the various instruments and belongings left behind in the bus, said Boyd.

Pimpleton, a Seattle transplant who moved to the Quincy area in order to become interim principal at the local high school, said he was proud of the show of support from his adopted community.

“This is a great community full of people with very big hearts. Mostly Cougar fans,” Pimpleton said with a laugh, “but everyone came out to help support our kids.”