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Meg Giordano paints smiley faces on plastic buttons Bob Kyle baked. These Orange County Community College students are helping raise scholarship money to honor friends killed in a car crash. — Sunday Record photo by Chris FarlekasStudents seek fundsfor OCCC scholarshipBy CHRIS FARLEKASMIDDLETOWN“So many things do pass in life. We want to remember.”That was the way Roland Larkin, a sophomore at Orange County Community College (OCCC), Middletown, explained his work to set up the DeLuca-Femandes scholarship award.Isa DeLuca and Diane Fernandes were killed in a car accident Jan, 23. They were on vacation between semesters at OCCC where they were nursing students.A third student, Veronica Warro, is still in the hospital. The girls were from the New Haven, Conn,, area.“It wasn’t enough to mourn at a grave,” Peggy Smith said. “We needed to do something.” The pert OCCC sophomore stressed the word“do.”Gradually, as friends of the dead girls met and talked, a handful decided to raise money for a scholarship ($250) to be given annually at OCCC graduation.The friends said they wished the money to be given “to a needy and deserving student, preferably a nursing student.”The goal they’ve set is$5,000.They’d raised a little more than one-tenth.Their primary fund-raising function has been making and selling “smiley.” buttons.Peggy said. “Isa and Diane used to make these buttons as a way to make money for books and equipment. It made a lot of people happy to see the smiling faces, so we decided to keep up the work.”The buttons are baked and painted by Meg Giordano and Bob Kyle. Meg was a roommate of the dead girls. She said she was doing this “for the people I love.” Kyle is a former Navy corpsman who was engaged in helping Marines fighting in Vietnam.Projects the students are planning include a car wash next month, a benefit movie and a house-to-house canvass.The thread of remembering the dead girls runs through their conversations. The night before the accident the girls were at a party. Larkin said. “There we were, and then a few hours later, they were dead.”Another friend. Aurelio Rubildo, seemed to sum it up in a poem: “Oh. my God. why? I kept asking, but there was no reply. I guess like all people, they had to die. A rose in two gardens lay, many miles apart.“But we won’t forget, as they live in our hearts.”•x*fA'.*.'
Newspaper Details
The Times Herald Record
Middletown, New York, US
Sun, Mar 28, 1971
Page 16
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
LA, USA 18 Sep 2022
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