Penny By Penny, Abington Looks To Raise $10K For Library
ABINGTON (CBS) -- Raising $10,000 one penny at a time – that's what they're doing in one local town.
In a storage closet at Abington's Timber Lanes bowling alley, owner Phil Hamric has amassed two-and-a-quarter tons – or about 750,000 – pennies.
Hamric is spearheading an Abington Lions Club fundraiser to collect $10,000 for the town library, which equals one million pennies.
"There's pennies being sorted, there's pennies in my office, there's pennies everywhere," Hamric told WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Karen Twomey.
The process of collecting the pennies is heavy, dirty, time-consuming and apparently, very successful.
"A lot of it's generosity, but a lot of us are just glad to get rid of them," Hamric said. "If I went to their door and asked for that in cash, I don't know what would've happened."
Abington Bank has donated armored cars to pick up the load, plus they'll add a $1,000 donation and count it all out. There's only a month left to go and 60,000 pennies left to raise, and Hamric says he's about ready to wrap this up.
"Am I glad the project is winding down?" Hamric said. "My back is, I'm sure I'm a half-inch shorter now from all the lifting."
Hamric says he and other Lions Club members have discovered that this project is really about meeting good people.
"It's the strangest thing, people are handing us amounts of money that normally they wouldn't hand to us," he said. "We've been overwhelmed by people's generosity, it's actually indescribable."
If you're interested in donating your pennies, you can drop them off at Timber Lanes Bowling , Trucchi's Supermarket, or the library itself.
The deadline is November 10.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Karen Twomey Reports:
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