ASHBURN, Va. 鈥� Hundreds of people showed up at the site of the Ashburn Colored School on Sunday to help restore the structure, which had been vandalized with racist graffiti the weekend before.
鈥淲e finished five hours of work in the first two hours, so then we were able to do an additional week or two鈥檚 worth of work.鈥� said Deep Sran, the founder of the Loudoun School for the Gifted, which owns the land.
The school has been raising money to restore the structure. Since the site was vandalized Sran said he鈥檚 been able to raise tens of thousands of dollars, which were used to help buy materials, such as the white paint that was being applied by numerous rollers on all four sides.
Tim Buckholz of Ashburn made this the first stop after returning聽from a trip out of town.
鈥淚t kind of shows the diversity of the community and that we aren鈥檛 going to put up with this stuff,鈥� said Buckholz, who had specks of paint on his face聽from scraping it聽off a wall.
Several hours into the restoration, Sran was beaming about the fruits of all the labor.
鈥淚t looks very close to what it looked like in the one image we have from 1940,鈥� said Sran. 鈥淲e have a lot of work still to do, replacing boards and so on.鈥�
He said the vandalism incident was 鈥渁 blessing in disguise.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e years ahead, in terms of our fundraising,鈥� Sran said. 鈥淲e now have the resources to bring this building back to life and begin to contemplate a museum of education behind it.鈥�
Former student Yvonne Thornton-Neal said the vandalism last weekend was 鈥渉eartbreaking to see.鈥� But the number of people came together to put paint on the building offered comfort.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a joy to see what happened today,鈥� Thornton-Neal said.
William Lucas, also a former student, said it offered up one more lesson.
鈥淭his shows the will of the people,鈥� said Lucas, 鈥渁nd what can happen when you have a large sum of people get together.鈥�
