9/11 Fund Hands Out $100M In Scholarships

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A generation of young people who lost their mothers and fathers on 9/11 are receiving financial help as they reach college age.

A scholarship fund set up for families of 9/11 victims said Wednesday it recently surpassed $100 million in awards handed out since the terrorist attacks.

The Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund said it surpassed the milestone while awarding more than $11 million in the 2013-14 academic year.

Overall, the fund said it has helped more than 2,400 students pay for college and will help thousands more children as they reach college age.

"Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund was established to support the victims who were lost in the towers, on the airplanes, at the Pentagon, but also for those who became permanently disabled due to their work on the rescue mission," fund director Rhianna Quinn Roddy told CBS 2's Dick Brennan.

Roddy said the scholarships give children and families of 9/11 victims "a real chance to pursue their education dreams after these very painful tragedies."

The fund -- underwritten by more than 20,000 corporations, universities, philanthropists and individuals -- still has nearly $96 million in the bank.

Fund officials say they expect that amount to grow through continued contributions as more 9/11 families send their children off to college.

Andrew Soulas, a 22-year-old junior at Fordham University, is one of the beneficiaries of the scholarship fund. He was in the fourth grade when his father, 35-year-old Timothy Soulas, was killed while working for Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center.

"As a fourth-grader, I didn't process it," Andrew Soulas said. "It took a while. So it wasn't until my late teenage years, even early 20s, that I was able to accept it."

As WCBS 880's Marla Diamond reported, of the more than 3,000 children who lost a parent on 9/11, 300 were kindergartners.

"These are still the peak years of the fund," Roddy said. "We still have between six and seven hundred students applying each year."

The Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund is the largest private scholarship fund for children, spouses and domestic partners of people killed or permanently disabled due to the terrorist attacks.

It is administered, without fees, by Scholarship America, the nation's largest nonprofit, private sector scholarship and educational support organization.

Joseph Palumbo said the scholarship fund helped him and his nine siblings chart their futures after losing their firefighter father on 9/11.

"It's inspiring to see that with each passing year, a new group of kids can get a chance to do whatever they chose to do in life, with the help of the fund," Palumbo said in a statement provided with the fund's milestone announcement.

Andrew Soulas said he's grateful for his scholarship and is moving on with his life. But he said he knows his father is always by his side.

"I just know I'm being taken care of," he said. "It's as simple as that."

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