Monday morning, after counting all the donations received, the students discovered their effort had raised more than $3,300.
"Originally we had a goal of $200," said Jane Tollefsrud, tutor at Moose Point. "This is 16.5 times the original. Isn't that something?"
Two years ago, Tollefsrud visited areas of Thailand that were destroyed by the disaster.
"It is so devastating to know that some of those places are gone," she said.
Although they lacked Tollefsrud's firsthand experience, the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students at Moose Point also were moved by the widespread destruction and felt the need to do something.
So Tollefsrud gave them a weeklong assignment to suggest ways to help.
"They came up with all these ideas — bake sales, penny drives, an auction, a snowmobile run," Tollefsrud said. Then, student Katie Spence, whose father plays with local band Too Fat to Fly, volunteered the band's participation.
Having the main attraction, Tollefsrud and the Moose Point scholars, as the students refer to themselves, began to put a plan together. Knowing that Homer Elks Lodge 2127 rents its hall for $200, the students committed to each contribute $20 to help pay for it, so they could host a dance.
"I went down to the Elks and they donated the space," Tollefsrud said. "Once that happened, I went, 'OK, we're going to really, really go for it now.'"
As it turned out, the band and the Elks were just the beginning of a flood of generous donations. By the time Friday night arrived, there were more than two dozen items for a silent auction, including everything from haircuts and artwork to a sea otter kayak trip and a walrus-viewing adventure. Nearly a dozen additional items were given for a raffle, offering tickets holders an opportunity to win bags of coffee, video punch cards, T-shirts, carvings, pizza and baked goods. Custom tags, suitable for family pets, were made on the spot. And tables were arranged end-to-end, to hold all the food and beverages that came from local kitchens and restaurants.
"This community is astounding for supporting things like this," Tollefsrud said.
Sporting matching orange T-shirts from Eagle Enterprises, she and the students greeted arriving guests, helped serve food and announced winning raffle tickets every half hour. Adult volunteers handed out prizes as they were won.
Once the crowd had eaten, the music began and the dance floor filled with youngsters and adults alike, celebrating the joint effort of helping others.
"We literally had 80 or more people that donated," Tollefsrud said. "I can't believe it."
Equally hard to grasp was the immensity of the tsunami's destruction and the 150,000 individuals still missing. Tollefsrud's husband, DeWaine, devised a method for visualizing what that number meant by covering a single page of paper with 4,200 dots and then printing enough dot-covered pages to equal 150,000.
"One panel is the population of Homer," said Tollefsrud of the display that became known as the "Sea of Faces," and took two ink cartridges to create. "When the kids saw that, it was really powerful."
What they can grasp is the amount their effort raised.
"We just finished counting the money, pennies, nickels, dimes, bills, and checks and added it twice," Tollefsrud said on Monday. "They are ecstatic. You can see that it was a major community event."
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.
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