Gone flying

Alicia Robinson

The only thing that prevented hundreds of bright paper kites from

upstaging the confectionary clouds in a painfully perfect sky on

Wednesday was a shortage of string.

In anticipation of the last day of school on Friday, Our Lady

Queen of Angels’ 315 students made their own kites with pieces of

paper, crepe streamers, plastic cross pieces and lengths of string.

Then they got to fly the kites outside in windy weather that seemed

to have anticipated their need for gusts.

“It’s really fun,” said Kasey DeYoung, 12. “It was a lot easier

than I thought it would be.”

Her kite was soaring along with many others, but some students

were plagued by technical difficulties.

Making the kite was easy, said Jack Gerdau, 12, but keeping it in

the air was a bit more challenging.

“This is actually my first time [flying a kite],” he said. “I had

it up before, but it got tangled, so I’m trying to fix it.”

The kite festival was the last of various enrichment programs the

school holds throughout the year, said parent Louise Deeb, who

coordinates the enrichment programs for the school’s auxiliary board.

She wanted something fun to do for the end of the school year, and

the kite class filled the bill, she said. The program was put on by

Huntington Beach-based Kites for Kids, which “kite man” Dave Shenkman

has run for 13 years.

He gives a 30-minute presentation on kite history, from ancient

China to Benjamin Franklin, and then he walks students through making

their own kites and explains how to fly them.

“Wind makes a kite fly; running doesn’t,” Shenkman told the

students. “Running is the biggest myth in kiting history.”

His high-energy, charismatic style kept them paying attention

until they were turned loose to try their kites. Once outside, the

students were running and laughing, but they weren’t the only ones

exhilarated by the kite activity.

“Who would have thought it was so simple to make a kite?” asked

Denise Labbe, who was helping her daughter, Emily, get her kite into

the air.

Even the school’s principal, Eileen Ryan, got in on the action,

helping students when their kite strings got snarled.

Ryan said it was great to see the students get so absorbed in the

activity, and the kites worked surprisingly well for being so simple.

“It’s pretty cool, considering they just made it,” she said.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.