By Betty Gandee

After an emotional few weeks for the residents of Clay County, the students at some local schools got a big surprise on Monday.

John Buckland, also known as Batman, visited Clay elementary, middle, and high school. He urged the students and teachers to turn the pain they were feeling into something powerful.

“Life is not always going to be easy and life is not always going to be fair,” Batman told the students.  He wanted to make the visit to empower them and tell them that Adrianna Morris, one of the students killed in the fire recently, would want him there relaying the message.

He made a trip to the middle school that day and spoke on a different level.  Telling the kids to never give up and always do the right thing.  One sixth grade student, Noah Collins said, “It relates to some of these kids because some of us don’t know what other people are going through. So we shouldn’t be breaking people down, we should be building them up.”

One of his last stops  for the day was the high school, where he spoke with twelfth grader Sharina Ratliff.  She said, ‘There have been numerous tragedies in our community over the recent years it seems and when he spoke today, he spoke about overcoming these obstacles.  I think it’s really important for the students here to hear this.’

Batman visited the foster parents of the children where he prayed with them, and visited the site of the future foster family park.

“The greatest way we can honor these kids that passed away is to let them look down and see a community coming together to make the changes that need to be changed,” Buckland said.