By:Angela Marshall
From lemonade stands to business challenges, Rockville Centre was a hub of activity geared toward raising funds and donations last week to help support rescue efforts and victims of the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center.
Children for hours waved signs from a makeshift lemonade stand on Hempstead Avenue on Saturday, doing what they could to raise funds for the Red Cross. Within three hours, Carly Roman, Beth Gidicsin, Amanda Roman, Alison Turnier, Sasha Reider and Christian Rudolph raised more than $200, and the total at day's end was $552.
Parents felt it offered a constructive way for the kids to be involved in the relief efforts. "A lot of people leave without taking any lemonade or cookies," Maureen Gidicsin said. "They just want to help, and that's what it's all about."
Many of those who couldn't stop showed their support by honking as they drove by.
People were just as generous at the Rockville Centre Rec Center, where Maureen Murray and Veri Patterson organized a clothing drive for firefighters, police and volunteers assisting in the rescue efforts at the Trade Center.
"We have a lot of friends here who have people missing," Murray said. "This is the one thing we can do as a community. The response is unbelievable."
Murray and her husband distributed fliers around town and got the word out to a larger audience by calling Z-100, a popular radio station.
Rec center employees helped Murray and Patterson sort and box the thousands of donations, which took up more than half of the center's lobby.
"If it wasn't for Tony [Brunetta], this wouldn't have been possible," Murray said of the village superintendent of recreation.
Larry Schoen of Rockville Centre said his employers at the Meadowbrook Care Center in Freeport told him about the collection and he hurried over with a donation after work on Thursday.
Another donation site is Karp Volvo-Buick-Saab, 400 Sunrise Highway. The dealership was named an official Red Cross and Salvation Army drop-off location and will be accepting donations for the rest of the month, or longer if there is need.
More than a ton of supplies had been collected by Saturday. The donations were boxed and transported to a main collection site in Hempstead.
Saturday afternoon, radio station K-JOY broadcast live from the dealership, encouraging people to bring by whatever they could, from something as small as a pair of socks to a carload of goods.
Dealership owner David Karp had planned to hold a tent sale last weekend, but after the attacks took place, he and a management team decided to scrap that and hold the relief drive instead.
In addition to opening the collection site, Karp established the Karp Challenge. The business will match individual monetary donations up to a total of $1,500. "Bring your coins, dollars or checks and we will match them penny for penny and dollar for dollar."
Checks to the fund are tax deductible and can be made out to the National Automobile Dealers Charitable Foundation. A separate fund for New York survivors has been set up.
Paul Travers of Rockville Centre brought in paw covers for the K-9 units working the disaster area. Travers was an electrician in World Trade Center Building 5 but had taken a few months off from work. He said it is still hard to comprehend the towers are gone.
