Meaghan McGonagle always wanted her students at Cranston High School East to do well.  And she wanted them to have fun in the process.

It’s one of the reasons she worked so hard to create a wearable mascot costume for the school, which is known as the Thunderbolts.  She labored over the design for a costume that a mascot could wear to encourage crowds to cheer at sports events – eventually settling on a pliable, green and white, grinning thunderbolt with arched eyebrows.  She enlisted students’ help to come up with the name, Benny the Bolt, and students have been eager to take on the role of ever since.

McGonagle would have been pleased that Benny was in the lobby of the school gymnasium last Friday, waving and posing for pictures with students and faculty who had gathered to see a new school store opened in her memory.

The store was another dream that McGonagle had for her students. She died on Dec. 6, 2021 after fighting Covid. She was 41 and the mother of two.

“Today is a very special day as we open the Thunderbolt school store in memory of Meaghan McGonagle,” Isa Tejada, an assistant principal at the school, told the crowd that had assembled. “She was the life of this project and also that of ‘Benny the Bolt.’

“The legacy of Meg will always be a tradition of excellence,” Tejada said. “She was not only a colleague but a dear friend. People only die when we forget them, and she will always be here in our hearts.”

Tejada and other colleagues said that as a business teacher and volleyball coach, McGonagle wanted the students to have a store stocked with Bolts’ regalia and she would have been happy with the bright new space created in the gym foyer, complete with easy indoor window service.  It will be open during most major sporting events and will be one-stop shopping for t-shirts, towels, water mugs and other items emblazoned with Benny the Bolt or the Cranston East logo.

“As a business teacher, she really wanted this for students and she worked so hard on this idea,” said colleague and good friend, Lori Medeiros, a physical education teacher at East.  With the help of fellow faculty members, and the support of the administration, Medeiros has labored to make the neatly stocked store a reality.  And there is no doubt that McGonagle continues to inspire, with a large poster-size photograph of her on the store wall.

McGonagle’s mother, Priscilla McGonagle, was at the school to commemorate the store opening by cutting a white ribbon. Clearly touched by the enthusiastic crowd, she said her daughter would have been so happy to see her dream store become a reality for the students, whom she loved “with her whole soul.”

Medeiros said that wanted to carry on McGonagle’s creative work for the store,  and she also wanted to make sure that the beloved teacher and volleyball coach is never, ever forgotten.  So, she said, she tried her hand at a little design work, creating a Benny the Bolt white and green oversized towel.

The image of the mascot that McGonagle created is there, but if you look very closely, there is also something else. Medeiros worked a reference to McGonagle’s initials into the design, with the small symbol M².  “It’s not obvious,” she said. “But it’s there for Meg.”