The seeds of a good deed done last December bore fruit for a group of Riverside Middle School students last Wednesday, as the residents council for Waterview Villa Rehabilitation and Health Care Center presented teacher Katie Solitro with a check for $750.

The money was raised by the residents of the Villa to help fund the 8th grade’s celebration at the end of the school year, and was initiated as a means for the residents to thank a crop of 8th graders who came to the retirement community this past December to bring presents they had purchased and wrapped to make sure that they got to experience the joy of opening a present during the holidays.

“The students come with armloads and truckloads of presents and fill up the dining room,” said Barbara Ellis-Voltas, Recreation Director for Waterview Villa. “And then they go room to room and pass them out and socialize with the patients. They don't just put the presents down, they go in and make a connection.”

It’s a holiday tradition now that Katie Solitro, an 8th grade math teacher of 15 years at Riverside Middle School, has organized and overseen for eight years now.

“A lot of the kids have never done anything like that in their lives, and so they get a lot out of it,” Solitro said. “They’ll say, ‘That was so nice. Is that really the only gift they wanted to get?’ It’s very eye-opening for a lot of them.”

On Wednesday, rather than simply run over to grab the check for the party, Solitro got the same group of kids who helped during the holidays, loaded them up into a van, and drove down to Waterview’s South Broadway facility.

The students proceeded to help harvest and re-sow their memorial garden, which was planted after one of their beloved, long-term residents, John Kent Jr., an Army veteran who passed away on Christmas Eve in 2020 after spending more than 20 years at Waterview.

“The strawberries went crazy this year,” Ellis-Voltas said. “We’re digging them up and selling them for the resident council fund and then we’ll be able to plant tomatoes, squash, beans, and the zucchini.”

Students got right to work, carefully extracting strawberry plants and placing them in decorative metal vases shaped like watering cans. They smoothed the soil, dodging a spider or two here and there with dramatic flair, and then went to work preparing the ground to receive the new bounty.