St Rose Student Featured On News Network

By Shannon Hicks

In three months Patrick Briscoe has collected more than $850 — in pennies — thanks to his Forget Me Not 9/11 Memorial Fund. The collection will allow Patrick to purchase a cobblestone on behalf of Newtown for one of the pathways at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Manhattan.

While his original plan was to collect $100, Patrick’s efforts have resulted in more than ten times that much being donated to his fund.

Patrick’s thoughtful work recently caught the attention of a FOX News Network producer, and the St Rose School seventh grade student was featured in a segment that aired last week on the national network. Martin Finn, a producer from FOX News Network, visited Newtown on May 5 to meet Patrick and film his story. The segment appeared one week later, during the May 12 broadcast of Fox Report with Shepard Smith, as part of the program’s ongoing “The Rise of Freedom” series.

Mr Finn visited Newtown to work on the story on May 5, and met with Patrick in the library of St Rose School. Mr Finn and a videographer also visited Bagel Delight, where one of Patrick’s collection cans has been placed, and spoke separately with Phil Palilla and John Sansburn, two men who donated large collections of pennies to Patrick’s collection.

The producer also spoke with First Selectman Pat Llodra and Legislative Council Chair Jeff Capeci, along with Patrick’s parents, Pat and Liz, but those segments were all dropped during the editing process. The interview of Mr Palilla was also left out of the 2-minute, 55-second story, but the camera did capture Mr Palilla as he handed over two large jars of pennies to Patrick a few weeks ago and that interaction was left in.

Patrick has been running his Forget Me Not Pennies 9/11 Memorial Fund since mid-February, when he decided he wanted to purchase a cobblestone within the paths of Memorial Plaza, a landscaped space within the memorial that continues to be constructed at the former World Trade Center site. The museum and its surrounding memorial space will include artifacts, photographs, audio and video tapes, personal effects and memorabilia, expressions of tribute and remembrance, recorded testimonies and digital files and websites related to the history of the World Trade Center, the events of September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993, and the repercussions of the two terrorist attacks.

Like countless other families, the Briscoes have a special connection to the former Twin Towers. Patrick’s parents, Liz and Pat, both worked there at one point. It was also where they shared their first date.

Patrick’s grandfather, John McNulty, also of Newtown, worked for 20 years on the 91st floor of the South Tower in an office that overlooked the Statue of Liberty. He was in his office the day a bomb was set off there in 1993.

The Briscoe family also knew many victims of 9/11, as well as rescue workers who worked during the recovery efforts.

The seventh grade student at St Rose School took it upon himself earlier this year to make sure at least one cobblestone at the national museum honors his hometown.

Decorated coffee cans were placed at St Rose School, C.H. Booth Library, Bagel Delight, and The Newtown Bee. Residents were invited, as the name of the collection implies, to drop their pennies into a can.

“The Forget Me Not Pennies 9/11 Memorial Fund name is based on the fact that if we all contribute pennies, they can be combined for a greater good,” Patrick told The Bee in February. The original goal of the fund was to collect at least 10,000 pennies in order to donate $100 for a cobblestone to be placed along a pathway of the museum in Manhattan.

“That cobblestone,” he said, “would be dedicated on behalf of Newtown so that we may never forget the victims of 9/11.”

By mid-March, thanks to the continued generosity of people dropping their pennies into the cans along with a large donations of pennies by residents who had been throwing pennies into their own containers at home for years, Patrick’s collection had grown to more than $348. That was when he decided to continue collecting, with a new target of $500 for a Memorial Glade Cobblestone. That stone will be placed within a small clearing in a grove of trees for social gatherings and annual ceremonies.

On May 12, Liz Briscoe reported that the collection has passed the $1,000 mark. With that much money in hand, Patrick has decided to sponsor one of the large granite pavers that will create walkways leading to the memorial.

Patrick sent a check to the memorial organization on Friday, according to Mrs Briscoe. The Forget Me Not 9/11 Memorial Fund cans remain in place around town.

“Patrick will continue to collect in increments of $100 to get more cobblestones,” Mrs Briscoe said.

The September 11 Memorial & Museum will be, says planners, “the authoritative source for an evolving understanding of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 1993.”

The memorial will consist of two massive pools set within the footprints of the Twin Towers. The pools will have the largest manmade waterfalls in the country cascading down their sides. The names of the nearly 3,000 individuals who were killed in the September 11 attacks in New York City, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon, as well as in the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing, will be inscribed on bronze parapets surrounding the twin pools.

Cobblestones and pavers will line the eight-acre landscaped Memorial Plaza, where nearly 400 trees are being planted to create “a contemplative space separate from the sights and sounds of the surrounding city,” according to the memorial’s website (www.National911Memorial.org).

While the cobblestones will not have inscriptions on them — the only names that will appear in the memorial will be those to whom the memorial is honoring — kiosks to be set up on Memorial Plaza will allow visitors to locate the stones they have sponsored.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum will be dedicated on September 11, the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, in a ceremony for the families of victims. Beginning September 12, the public may visit the memorial with a reserved visitor pass. Construction to complete the full museum and memorial is expected to continue until 2014.

Although the memorial is still under construction, a 9/11 Memorial Preview Site has been opened at the corner of Vesey and Church Streets. Visitors to that location can learn about the continued plans for and progress of the museum and memorial, view real time images of the construction process, and participate in the creation of the museum by sharing their 9/11 stories.

The preview site opened its doors on August 26, 2009, and saw its one millionth visit last summer.

Patrick and his family took a trip into the city last month, when Patrick was on spring break, to visit the 9/11 Preview Site.

Footage from that trip was also incorporated into the FOX News segment.

“It was unbelievable,” Liz Briscoe said last week. “Patrick was very impressed with it and it really gave him a better understanding of what he is doing.

“It made it clear for him why he was doing this.”