• December 07, 1998
• Vol. 50
• No. 21

Penny-Wise

A Boy's Dream of Helping the Poor Inspires a Town to Open Its Heart and Empty Its Pockets

Matthew Nonnemacher's fourth-grade teacher at St. Joseph's Memorial Elementary School in Hazleton, Pa., asked her class last year to write down a single wish they would like granted. Amid the usual assortment of wishes for clothes, bicycles and video games, Matthew's stood out. "His wish was for the poor to have what we have," says teacher Terry Smith. Other students have in the past had similarly selfless wishes, she says, but none ever tried to make them come true.

Matthew was different. The shy, studious 10-year-old wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper seeking ideas to enable him to help the poor. In response, one reader suggested a dime drive. Matthew (the third of four children) talked it over with his father, John Nonnemacher, 41, an accountant, and mother Sandra, 38, and then set his own ambitious goal: He would collect one million pennies, or $10,000.

With his parents' help, Matthew got the United Way of Greater Hazleton to join forces with him. And in August the "A Million Ways to Care" penny drive was launched, with Matthew's cherubic face featured on hundreds of jars around the working-class city of 26,000. On Oct. 22, the collected pennies were paraded through town on a flatbed truck and tallied at a local bank. The final sum: 1,819,691 pennies, or $18,196.91. "I was happy," says Matthew, who hopes to become a priest. "I just wanted to help the poor."