Pennies-project committee eyes memorial idea

Tate Smithhart, from top left, Grace Shannon and Lucas Yarbrough, along with Ty Heslep, bottom left, 
Hannah Johnson, Gabriel Goodwin and Emma Duncan, are shown last school year with thousands of pennies they gathered in the One Cent, One Life project to promote awareness of the Holocaust. The
students had planned to collect 6 million pennies to represent the number of Jews killed — put 1.5 million on display and donate the rest to the Jewish Foundation of Arkansas. However, Vilonia Middle School Principal Lori Lombardi said she and Superintendent David Stephens agree that the 1.5 million pennies — $15,000 — should be spent on a memorial. Lombardi said the money takes up too much room and is a liability to have at the school.
Tate Smithhart, from top left, Grace Shannon and Lucas Yarbrough, along with Ty Heslep, bottom left, Hannah Johnson, Gabriel Goodwin and Emma Duncan, are shown last school year with thousands of pennies they gathered in the One Cent, One Life project to promote awareness of the Holocaust. The students had planned to collect 6 million pennies to represent the number of Jews killed — put 1.5 million on display and donate the rest to the Jewish Foundation of Arkansas. However, Vilonia Middle School Principal Lori Lombardi said she and Superintendent David Stephens agree that the 1.5 million pennies — $15,000 — should be spent on a memorial. Lombardi said the money takes up too much room and is a liability to have at the school.

VILONIA — Vilonia seventh-graders’ ambitious Holocaust project — One Cent, One Life — kicked off last school year, but the middle-school principal said the original plan needs to be changed.

The students started in January 2016 with a goal to collect 6 million pennies — $60,000 — to represent Jews killed in the Holocaust. Pennies came rolling in, one, two, hundreds at a time — some in cash and checks.

They planned to put 1.5 million pennies on permanent display — to represent the number of children who died — and send the rest to the Jewish Foundation of Arkansas.

To date, the students have collected about 500,000 pennies from all over the country.

Vilonia Middle School Principal Lori Lombardi said she and Superintendent David Stephens discussed that

1.5 million pennies “is a lot of money just not to put to use,” she said. “We would rather them do something as a memorial, but put it here.”

The principal, students and a couple of parents met last week to discuss the project. A committee of students was formed to come up with a plan to spend the pennies on a memorial instead of just displaying them, Lombardi said.

“A container for 1.5 million pennies — you’ve got to have somewhere to put it – and it’s huge,” Lombardi said.

The principal also said it’s a risk to have so much money, even if it is in pennies, sitting at the school.

“The main thing we realized was just having them sitting there now — we can’t legally, auditwise, do that.”

Lombardi said she told students at the meeting, “Y’all think of it as a coffee can of pennies, no big deal, but somebody who’s wanting to buy drugs, a coffee can of pennies looks pretty good to them. People might walk out with them. Plus, it takes up a lot of room.”

The 500,000 pennies have been taken to the bank, she said Wednesday.

Parent Amber Wilmington attended last week’s meeting. She said her son, Logan, was involved with the project last year as a seventh-grader.

“He was one of the ones who would miss his lunch to go count pennies,” she said.

Wilmington said she and her son, as well as other students and parents, don’t want to see the project end before the goal is reached.

Quitting would not be a good lesson for the kids, she said.

Lombardi said the project will go on.

“Our plan is — we’re going to do it till they get their goal — we’re not going to cut it off. Great, if they can do it this year, but if they can’t, they can go till they reach that 1.5 million mark,” she said.

Logan Wilmington, 13, is on the committee this year as an eighth-grader.

In the beginning, I was kind of scared — we’re collecting 6 million pennies — I just didn’t think we’d ever reach that,” he said.

The pennies project was inspired by Linda Knapp’s Pre-Advance Placement literacy class and a regular class. Knapp’s literacy classes study the Holocaust each year and come up with a project to complement their studies. Grace Shannon, a seventh-grader last year, came up with the idea to collect pennies.

When almost 500,000 had been collected by the end of the school year, Logan said, he was excited that the goal could be reached.

He still wants to see 1.5 million pennies placed on display in the school, and he doesn’t think they will get stolen in the meantime.

“A jug of pennies weighs probably 15 pounds,” he said, and “it would take a forklift” to steal a case of 1.5 million pennies.

The case could be removed from the school at the end of the year for the summer, he said, and returned when school starts.

“It doesn’t really sit well with me that we told the donors, ‘Hey, we’re going to put the pennies out in the hallway,’ and we’re going to do something completely different,” he said.

Logan said if the administration doesn’t allow the pennies to be put on display, he would be willing to buy a memorial.

The project has been worthwhile, he said.

“I learned a ton from it. I’ve learned about the Holocaust a lot, but Mrs. Knapp just took it to another level,” Logan said.

In addition to learning about the atrocities of the Holocaust, “I learned what happened when a group of people get together how you can reach impossible goals — like Mrs. Knapp’s classes — how many pennies we’ve collected in just the two or three months we had left of school last year,” he said. “I was just amazed.”

Wilmington said she told students that they’re “going to have to get on the ball and get this project moving.”

The project sat idle during the summer, she said, and “it’s time to get back on it.”

Wilmington said she called a friend who owns a T-shirt business and asked her to design a T-shirt for the One Cent, One Life project to sell and help raise awareness of the students’ efforts to collect pennies.

Donations may be mailed to Vilonia Middle School, 49 Eagle St., Vilonia, AR 72173; or brought to the school.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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