Glen Rock Students Reach Out to Boston Bombing, Tornado Victims With 'Stars of Hope'

At 10 a.m. in room 123 of Glen Rock High School, 15 sophomores sat down to write messages of endurance and positivity to people they had never met, scrawling them with paint and marker on large wooden stars. Across the school other students the same age, 180 in all, were doing the same. 

“STAY STRONG,” read one. “Peace! We Love You!” exclaimed another. 

Some of the stars were bound for the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester, MA - the school that Richard Martin, at eight years old the youngest victim of the Boston Marathon bombings, had attended. Others would be sent to Oklahoma, where tornadoes claimed at least 24 lives Monday night, 9 of them children.

It was part of a service-learning project organized by the 9/12 Generation Project, a division of the New York Says Thank You Foundation, founded in 2003. 

“The idea of it is that good things can come out of bad things, whether it be 9/11 or what happened last night,” said GRHS principal John Arlotta, referring to the Oklahoma tornadoes that had killed at least 24, including 9 children. 

In the library, Mia Toschi, a GRHS graduate and co-director of the 9/12 Generation Project, watched students paint what the project calls Stars of Hope. 

“Glen Rock was one of the worst-hit towns by 9/11, but it came together, and it was able to overcome through hope, through cooperation,” Toshi said. Through the Stars of Hope project, she added, “students learn the power of paying it forward, of spreading that hope.”

GRHS sophomores had started their day with a screening of New York Says Thank You - The Movie, released by the foundation in 2011, which aims to explain the 9/11 attacks to those too young to remember them by framing the tragedy in the context of the outpouring of support and camaraderie that filled the nation in the days that followed. 

In New Jersey, the project is funded by a grant from the PSE&G Foundation, the company’s nonprofit division, and supplied with volunteers from accounting corporation KPMG. 

“We’re first responders, too,” said Ellen Lambert, president of the PSE&G Foundation. “We’re always involved when the power goes down, when there’s a disaster or a tragedy.” 

She added that she hoped the experience would “open doors on students’ own ability to provide for others.”

As time passed, brightly painted stars - some elaborately decorated, some simply adorned, piled up on a table in the library. 

“I hope they keep faith, keep believing they can make a change,” said Brandon Rosario, looking up from his own star. 

The Neighborhood House Charter School was particularly hard hit by the bombings that shook Boston and the country on April 15, killing three people and injuring more than 250. Eight-year-old student Martin Richard was killed; his sister Jane lost a leg in the attack, and his mother Denise, the school’s librarian, suffered head injuries and has not yet regained her vision in one eye. 

“I hope when people see the stars, they know there are others out there who care,” said Ariel Shilitz, a sophomore. “Even though we’re a small town in the middle of New Jersey, we’re still here looking out for each other.”

Correction: The last name of Ariel Shilitz was misspelled in an earlier version.