The Confluence Lions Club has bought Turkeyfoot Valley Area School a driving simulator, and the public is invited to see it.
The ribbon cutting is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, September 10, in the drivers ed classroom at the school, 172 Turkeyfoot Road.
The drivers ed program already has a car, which works fine for learning to drive around Confluence. What a car around here cannot teach is a four-lane merge, a city intersection at rush hour, or black ice in February. Students were graduating without ever having met those conditions behind the wheel. The simulator puts them in all three with nobody’s fender at stake.
Every dollar came from donations. Local businesses, nonprofits, churches and individuals paid for it. No grant, no line in the school budget.
Leroy Nace, a retired Confluence businessman and Lions Club member, did the collecting. He spent a great many volunteer hours on it, the sort of work that does not show up at a ribbon cutting unless somebody says so out loud. Consider it said.
Everybody is welcome Thursday evening. Show up, have a look at it, and thank Leroy and the Lions.