Jim Carr of Cranston is a member of the Cranston High School East class of 1981, and he’s hoping some of his fellow alumni and local members of the community will help him out with a special project – restoring the majestic wooden entryway doors to the school, formerly known as Cranston High School, when there was just one high school in the city.

Carr happened to notice that the grand wooden doors were in disrepair during a visit to the school for a theater performance this past spring.

“I was coming out of a play at Cranston East this spring, and as I was leaving, I was holding the doors open for the people behind me,” he said. “Looking at them up close, I noticed that the doors were awful. They’ve been affected by the snow and the rain, years of weather, and they seem as if door handles were removed and the holes were left there. The closer I looked, the more I noticed, there were even some damaged areas at the bottoms of the doors. They were definitely in need of some repair and restoration.”

Carr has an affinity for maintaining pieces of the past, and restoring the doors to his former high school appealed to him greatly.

“The last thing I want to see is those doors replaced with those big steel doors that we see on buildings now,” he said. “That said, we need to get them into better shape than they are now, if we want them to last.”

He hopes that his fellow classmates, and even those outside of the class of 1981, will agree and join in the efforts to restore the doors.

In order to assess what was really needed for the project, Carr reached out to local business owner Paul Durfee at Durfee Hardware, who agreed to ride by and see what was needed and to help Carr in his efforts.

“The doors definitely need to be sanded and polyurethaned, at least,” Carr said. “The handles need to be addressed. Some brass work may need to be done.”

Carr also asked Stephanie Culhane of the Cranston School Committee to speak with the school department and make sure that clearance was given for the group of alumni to restore the doors. Once the approval was received, Carr began to reach out to his local friends and fellow classmates.

“The school department was 100 percent on board. Now I’m looking for people to step up and help me out,” Carr said. “We’d need people interested in putting in a couple of days’ work, and I’d love to have some people who might have carpentry and woodworking skills, but really, anyone who wants to help is welcome – current students, former students, anyone from the community or even from the school. I really want to make sure that this is done right so that we can keep the historical integrity of these doors.”

Carr would like the project to be completed before the start of the new school year, and is hoping to do the work over the weekends of Aug. 20-21 and, if needed, Aug. 27-28.

Anyone interested in helping out can contact Carr at fenwaysyear@aol.com.