Day 332 of 365 Days of Being Thankful

         Today I am thankful that we received a thank you note from the person who received the Amy Marie Fledderman Memorial Scholarship at Penn State University.  When Amy died we set up a scholarship fund at our bank.  We donated that money to our church in Amy's name to fund some of the missionary work in our church,  We could nt decide what to do with the money for the longest time.  It felt that we would be losing ll of Amy if we ever gave it away.  We kept it in the bank for about 16 years.  One day Dan suggested that we donate it to the bank after hearing a story about a little girl named Hattie May who had saved her money for a new church. Amy was always so generous to everyone.  For the longest time, the donated money sat in a bank fund. We just couldn't give it away because it was connected to Amy.  After hearing the story of Hattie May by our pastor, we decided to donate the money to our church in Amy's memory.  She would have wanted the money to be used to do good.  After the civil trial, our attorney Slade McLaughlin, donated his fees to form the Amy Marie Fledderman Memorial Scholarship Fund at Penn State University. Every year the university selects a student to receives a few thousand dollars towards their college education.

Hattie became well-known for an inspiring act of charity. According to Temple Univeristy founder Russell Conwell, Hattie May was a student in his church's Sunday School, however many students included herself could not attend because the room was too small. Finding Hattie outside, Conwell says he brought her inside and reassured her that hopefully one day a bigger building would be built to fit all the children. Hearing this, Hattie resolved to save her pennies to make this happen. When she died not long after, a small purse was found under her pillow containing the 57 cents she had saved. At her funeral her mother gave the money to Conwell, which he took to the church and, telling her story, announced it as the first gift towards the new Sunday School building. He changed the money into pennies which he offered for sale. They were sold for $250 and almost all of the pennies returned to him as well. The $250 was then changed into pennies and sold for enough to buy the property for the school. Inspired by Hattie May's generosity, the congregation not only built a bigger Sunday School but an entire new church. The "Wiatt Mite Society" named for her managed to raise the money against all odds and the church was built right on Broad Street. The owner of the lot purchased for the new church accepted Hattie's pennies as the first down payment on the property, and though it was officially called Grace Baptist Church this new church also became known as The Temple. It was out of this church, bought with Hattie's pennies, that Temple University grew as well. Conwell declared that this congregation of thousands was born out of Hattie May's small investment. He said "she is happy on high with the thought that her life was so full, that it was so complete, that she lived really to be so old in the influences she threw upon this earth."