N

Coffee County Schools has formally accepted the donation of a new LED sign for its baseball and softball programs that will help with the upkeep of The Crethan Hansert Memorial Hitting Facility through the advertising revenue it generates.

“Our employees, our members of our community always place a lot of importance on doing everything we can for the young people here in Coffee County, but there are some people that spend even more time,” Director of Schools Dr. Charles Lawson said during the Board’s regular meeting March 13. “Well one person who has worked for a number of years, and this person took a tragedy in their life and tried to create opportunities for the kids that were left behind and that is Mr. Hansert.”

Hansert donated the $30,000 sign in memory of his late son Crethan Hansert, who was a member of the CCCHS Baseball Team when he was killed in a single-car accident on Halloween 2003.

Looking to make something positive out of the tragedy, Hansert joined forces with family, friends and area businesses to build The Crethan Hansert Memorial Hitting Facility, which was completed in 2005.

“As we started building the hitting facility our goal was to keep the students on the campus and to keep them off the roads and hopefully to keep another family from going through what our family went through,” Hansert said during the meeting.

Hansert said his family were looking for a way to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of Crethan’s death, and thought a sign that could benefit the baseball and softball programs would be an excellent fit.

“We thought that would be a good way to honor Crethan and other players that played baseball and softball that we had lost over the past years ,and today there are four: Brian Young, Dusty Elam, William Myers and last but not least Miss Courtney Howland,” he said. “Once again with the help of several families, friends and businesses from all over, we purchased this sign.”

“From myself, my son Brent and my wife April and our entire family we would like to donate this sign at this time to the Coffee County Baseball and Softball programs,” Hansert said.