V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette Lindsay Rosenfeld, left, of Monroeville, and Erin Sekel, of Pittsburgh, cast long shadows as they stain a bench during Impact Day at Kelly School in Wilkinsburg. The pair are employees of Deloitte & Touche who spent the day painting and landscaping the school grounds. Click photo for larger image.

As the bright October sun painted Kelly Elementary School playground several shades of autumnal gold, sixth-grader Curtis Brown, Jr. concentrated on coloring Uranus a vivid neon green.

Nearby, Keri Horvat, 30, senior manager for the local Deloitte and Touche's auditing department, and Lindsay Rosenfeld, 26, a member of Horvat's staff, helped third-grader Dennis Briggs with Pluto.

Teacher's aid Ed Barnhart watched LaNora Cokers and her fellow sixth-graders fill in Saturn with shades of lavender and blue.

"We wanted to get involved with the painting and clean-up day, and the children came up with this design for their playground," explained art teacher Barbara Beadle. "We tied it in to their research on the solar system."

In more down-to-earth activities, 50 volunteers from the firm's Downtown Pittsburgh office, most under 30 and wearing blue "Deloitte" T-shirts, lent students a hand last Friday morning with planting new shrubbery and flowers around the school, painting benches and sprucing-up the Kelly school sign out front.

They also got a lead on a second career should their tasks with number crunching and spread sheets prove tiresome down the road.

"When we first showed up, one little girl asked 'Are you guys professional landscapers?'" said Madeline Hirsch, 23, a systems analyst. "I guess it was because of the T-shirts."

Actually, Deloitte employees were at Kelly as part of the company's Impact Day, which began in 1999 on a small scale and went national this year.

The firm donated $650 to buy and plant bushes and perennials for the school, and employees from the Pittsburgh office arrived by school bus at 9 a.m. and worked until 2 p.m. Ken Chambon, Wilkinsburg School District's director of maintenance, helped oversee the project and provided waste cans, painting cloths and brushes.

Across the region, 400 Deloitte employees volunteered at 15 sites, including Children's Hospital, the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank, Light of Life Mission, the Western Pennsylvania Nature Conservancy, the Red Cross and several Boys and Girls clubs.

In the wider effort, the firm's employees across the country and from its offices in China, Finland and Mexico spent the day volunteering with schools and other organizations. In some cases, they helped recent flood victims get back on their feet.

"In Texas, our employees are working with the Red Cross to re-stock vans of supplies for people hit by the hurricanes in Florida," said the "old man" of the firm, 35-year-old Jerry Orban, a senior manager for Deloitte's consulting group.

The Wilkinsburg connection to Deloitte is consultant Jonathan Fortier, 25, whose girlfriend Lisa Papania teaches fifth grade at Kelly.

"These are a great bunch of kids, and after getting involved with some of the after-school programs, I wanted to give something back to them," said Fortier, who looks young enough for Principal Eileen Amato to ask him for his hall pass.

Wilkinsburg children also had drawn in Amato, 49, who became acquainted with the district while working with the University of Pittsburgh's Urban Schools Initiative several years ago.

With 26 years of teaching behind her, Amato left her post in the Armstrong School District, moved to Murrysville to be closer to her job, and took over at Kelly two years ago.

She finds her students bright, willing and often faced with problems foreign to those in more affluent communities.

"These kids tugged at me. These kids are great," said Amato.

Gifted support teacher Michele Gaydos agreed, pointing to one of her best students, Destiny Beasley, a tiny, feisty, math-loving second-grader. Gaydos said Destiny walks to school every day from her home on North Avenue, many blocks from Kelly.

As the day progressed, student council President Quintin Anderson and Vice President Robert Taylor, both sixth-graders, rounded up the troops for a pizza lunch break. Student council secretary and fifth-grader Kimberlyn Coles stood, pitch fork in hand, on top of a mulch pile next to the playground.

"Is there horse manure in this?" she asked, bouncing to the beat of a radio pop song. "I think there is!"

And while they might be on the fast-track to high-powered careers in finance, the young Deloitte employees didn't seem much different this day from the youngsters they'd come to assist.

"It's nice to finally have a day out of the office," said systems analyst Kara Wilson, 22, with a sigh. She joined the firm in July. Hirsch concurred, adding, "It was really fun riding the school bus again."