Rocky River High School students will have a new presence in their halls—a seven-and-a-half feet tall granite pirate. He’s a larger-than-life representative of pirate pride and a gift from graduate Jim Milano in honor of his late sister, Maria, who was a cheerleader while at Rocky River High School.
Jim Milano, owner of Milano Monuments, commissioned a drawing that incorporated the district’s new pirate logo into a statue, according to his cousin, School Board Member Jay Milano. A sculptor created a 3-foot prototype, and the final statue was cut from a four-ton piece of granite.
The pirate sculpture will be dedicated on Friday evening and then moved to its permanent location, inside the student lobby at the high school (also the gym lobby).
The massively impressive pirate is one of a number of generous gifts community members and graduates have given to Rocky River High School recently. Over the last couple of years, a group called the Campus Foundation has overseen distribution of funds for the Campus Project, an extensive public/private partnership whose mission is to turn the high school grounds into a campus.
The Campus Project has included the new landscaping of the high school, the landscaping of the arts and sciences courtyard (led by Gregg Mylett) and, once the smokestack is entirely cleared out, landscaping of that courtyard as well.
A hallmark of the Campus Project will be to turn the area outside the commons and media center—visible from those areas by enormous windows, into the “central campus,” says Jay Milano, a member of the Campus Foundation. Plans for the courtyard include plantings, tables, and concrete seating areas, in an endeavor spearheaded by Foundation member Gregg Mylett. Fundraising for this phase is ongoing; community members can see plans in a tent the Campus Foundation will have set up at the south end of the field at Friday evening’s football game.
The Campus Foundation is run by Dave Furry, Gregg Mylett, and Rob Jurs, who oversee raising the money and designing the improvements for the Campus Project.
“The Campus Foundation is about using everything we have to help the education of the students,” Jay Milano summarizes. “High School is not just bricks and mortar, it’s not just books, not just teachers. It’s where the community lives. It’s the central part of a thriving community. And so the idea that it’s a beautiful place to be was important to us.”
Rocky River students—and the wider community—are the fortunate recipients of that idea.