Ka-pow! Bam! Boom!

If life were a comic strip, those might be the words used to describe the punches the Vicksburg Warren School District is taking this year with retirements of nearly 1,786 years of experience in teachers, administrators and staff.

On Thursday night, 62 district employees were feted during the Board of Trustees’ last meeting of the 2009-2010 school year. They are to be thanked.

At the top of the heap of jobs that will be vacant for the time being are some of the district’s top decision-makers, Superintendent James Price, Deputy Superintendent John Walls, Beechwood Elementary Principal Jack Grogan and Redwood Principal Bubba Hanks. No one can discount the years of delicate matters each has dealt with as he has made his way through the 9,000-student school district.

Lest we forget — and with deference to the bosses — many more have been in the trenches, working one-on-one with a classroom of students each day, preparing and serving about 180 lunches this year alone and cleaning up behind students in the cafeterias, scrubbing classrooms and hallways after students have left for the day or rising before dawn to crank the myriad yellow buses that transport students every school day.

As in all communities, Vicksburg and Warren County rely on these people — all of them — to do the right thing by the children. They have. They are to be thanked.