IRONDEQUOIT, N.Y. — A high school senior from the Rochester area is being recognized for a selfless act. It involves her senior parking spot, her principal’s favorite football team — and a paintbrush.
When Maddie Underhill has a vision, she best expresses it through art.
“Art gives me that freedom,” said Underhill, a senior at Eastridge High School in Irondequoit. “It allows me to have some level of control in a world where I feel like I have very little.”
Like other Eastridge seniors, the parking lot is the canvas where seniors paint their own parking spots for their final year of high school.
“So it's kind of a nice way for the seniors to kind of have ownership, and a small square in a parking lot,” said interim principal David Dunn.
Dunn says the senior parking spots are kind of a big deal for most students, but not as much for Maddie who is legally blind and cannot drive.
“You really have to trust the process of what you're dealing with,” she said. “You’ve got to kind of look at it from what you have, and then what you want.“
Now, Maddie is not a football fan. But she knows her principal is.
“My whole life,” said Dunn. “Always been a big Bills fan.”
Right down to his Buffalo Bills tie. Dunn often wears Bills gear to school. All of which inspired a familiar logo in Maddie’s parking spot.
“One thing I always try to strive for supporting other individuals for what interests they have,” said Underhill.
Most school administrators have their own place to park. Assigned parking spots come with the title.
“And the irony is that I never really ever wanted my own parking spot, because I didn't want to be seen as different,” said Dunn.
Maddie saw it differently, being a big fan of one big Buffalo Bills fan.
“He is lovely, I think,” she said of Dunn. “And I'm not saying that to be like a teacher's pet. I actually do legit think that he's been an amazing principal.”
Which inspired an amazing gesture. Maddie asked her principal if he would take her senior parking spot. The one she painted a perfect Buffalo Bills logo on.
“Total shock,” said an emotional Dunn. “It was like waking up Christmas morning, and getting something that you didn't expect.”
After graduation, Maddie plans to attend Monroe Community College and eventually hopes to enroll at Rochester Institute of Technology, where she’ll study visual arts.
“It's nice to know that I'm doing small things to help build up other people and give them a sense of appreciation,” said Underhill. “That other people appreciate them because I feel like a lot of times people don't really appreciate not just like principals, but each other.”
More often than not, it’s the adults trying to get through to students. This connection came thanks to the vision of an extraordinary young lady.
“I was blown away,” said Dunn. “Never had a student in my whole career do something that special for me.”