Lake Orion High School Leadership students waved the American flag and rallied their classmates during the ninth annual Cell Out for Soldiers event on Friday. Photos by Megan Kelley.

By Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
ORION TWP. — For the ninth year in a row students at Lake Orion High School participated in the school’s annual Cell Out for Soldiers.
For one day every year, the LOHS Leadership class asks students to give up their cell phones to raise money for the charity Cell Phones for Soldiers.
This year, LOHS Leadership estimates about 1,900 phones were given up for the day.
“For every phone we collect we donate $1 to the charity Cell Phones for Soldiers which provides talk minutes to our soldiers overseas so that they can call their loved ones,” said committee chair for Cell Phones for Soldiers, Gabrielle DiMeo. “We’re basically trying to mimic kind of what they do every day and we’re just doing it for a couple hours but, it’s just to get the feeling of what they go through.”
Students arrive in the morning to music and excitement with tables filling the front hallway, all manned by members of Leadership who help facilitate the actual “giving up” of the cell phones.
Students place their phones in sealed bubble wrapped bags and place them in their own backpacks so the cell phones are accessible, if necessary.
Once the phone is stowed away, the students receive a free Cell Out t-shirt that they are encouraged to wear throughout the day.
Later, students attend the annual Community Heroes volleyball game where the fun continues with members of the community facing off against LOHS students.
“We have veterans, we have active service members coming in this year that have literally participated in Cell Out themselves when they were in high school. We have firefighters, nurses, anyone that has served our community and helped us in ways that maybe not everyone sees,” DiMeo said. “They’re going to play volleyball with some of our students and the whole student body is there and they also play some assembly games so it should be very fun. No phones, it’s really interactive.”
Cell Phones for Soldiers continues to be one of the biggest events LOHS holds, encompassing the entire student body.