Roslyn Highlands Firefighters, in conjunction with "Hugs Across America," helped distribute over 5,000 Teddy Bears to school children in New York City.

After the Sept. 11 attack, a New York City schoolteacher who lives in Manhasset, Susan Lucarelli, relayed the story of how the children in her school were locked in for over four hours waiting for their parents to arrive to take them home. At this time, she had only three stuffed bears in her classroom to help comfort the children. She noticed how as each child got the stuffed bear, it had a calming effect on him or her. She spoke with her friends from her church, the Community Reformed Church, and asked if they could donate 34 bears for her kids. Soon every child in the school wanted one. The church sent out an appeal to other churches and friends nationwide. As word got out about the bears, the church received over 13,000 requests for them. On the supply side, over 33,000 stuffed bears came in from all across the nation.

Now delivery was beginning to be a problem. Roslyn Highlands Firefighter Bob Latzen and his wife Lorrie are also members of the church. On a Wednesday in mid-December, Lorrie asked Bob if Roslyn Highlands could help, so Bob asked Chief Robert Suchnowski and Trustees Larsen, Sokolski and Goolsby for assistance. With less than 24 hours notice, the call went out for volunteers to help load the bears onto the bus for the ride to New York and almost a dozen volunteers went to the firehouse, jumped on the bus and headed for Manhasset. At the church, over 5,000 stuffed bears were loaded onto the bus.

On Friday morning at 6:30 a.m., more than a dozen Roslyn Highlands firefighters got on the bus and headed into New York City. In downtown Manhattan, Roslyn's bravest, many of whom had been to Ground Zero several times after the Sept. 11 attacks to assist in the recovery efforts, were now there to assist the younger victims of the attack. Firefighters delivered the stuffed bears to elementary school children who had been, and by many accounts, are still affected by the attacks. They now have, thanks to many volunteers nationwide, a stuffed bear of their own to help comfort and console them. The Roslyn Highlands volunteers spent over six hours in Manhattan handing out the bears in several schools.

Roslyn Highlands members would like to thank Lorrie Latzen for getting them involved in this program, as it was a great stress reliever for some of the members who were directly involved. The looks on the children faces, seeing this gift of a little stuffed bear, put the biggest smiles on the cutest faces. It was an honor for Roslyn's bravest to be involved.