On Sept. 11, Columbia will be the starting point for a “Day of Hope” for all of Mississippi.
“All 82 counties have been contacted, given packets of information and asked to join us on Sept. 11 for a ‘Day of Hope,’ organizer Carlton Thornhill, founder of Hearts of Hope, said. “A ceremony will be held in Columbia at 8 a.m. followed by a motorcade to the Mississippi Delta to the crash site area where 16 servicemen lost their lives in a plane crash in a soybean field. A ‘Tree of Hope’ ceremony will be held in Moorhead at the historic park where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog.”
The packets sent to each county contain a Star of Hope, which was painted in a community affected by a tragedy.
“They are supposed to take their Star of Hope and take a picture of it by their courthouse or other location and then send it to Stars of Hope,” Thornhill said. “My hope is to have the entire state participate, that’s why I sent a packet to all 82 counties. I want 9/11 to be a nationwide holiday, instead of it being just about a remembrance of the planes hitting the towers, in Washington, D.C. and in Pennsylvania. I wanted to turn it into a Day of Hope to lump all of our tragedies, whether it is a tornado, the shootings at Sandy Hook, the plane crash in the Delta and set that day to remember it add hope. It’s simple; it’s not a costly thing. There are simple ways to do it and schools can do it. New Hope School is doing it here and they are painting Stars of Hope that will be sent to Texas. Some of theirs will be sent to New York. These children are actually learning about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. They will then paint stars that will be sent to New York.”
Sept. 11 will begin with the annual walk by firefighters which will end at City Park and the ceremony.
“The walk will begin at 7 a.m. at the Evergreen Street station,” Columbia Fire Department Capt. Nathan Guy said. “We will walk carrying flags and remembering those who were lost on 9/11.”
Thornhill said that while firefighters and volunteers are walking across the city to the ceremony, volunteers will be collecting school supplies for children in Texas and Louisiana who have been affected by Hurricane Harvey.
“We’ll have a small ceremony when the firefighters arrive,” Thornhill said. “I’ll talk about the first responders and then about where we’re going. We have a Star that was created by a little girl that had leukemia and later died. They told her to ‘Be Brave,’ so she painted that message on a Star.”
Thornhill has several Stars of Hope painted by survivors of other tragedies, including one painted by a Pulse nightclub survivor.
“We have Stars of Hope from many locations,” he said. “We also have a Star from Mayor Justin McKenzie to the mayor there. I’ll be taking that to their ceremony. We will be leaving and hopefully we will be escorted out by a fire truck or a police car. We are going to Moorhead for a 1 p.m. ceremony. They have a park there, Calhoun Park. It is four miles from the plane crash site. We will make a Tree of Hope there. I have 200 Stars that we’re bringing. Our hope is that this is just the beginning. I want it to be nationwide. New York is using what we’re doing as a blueprint.”
Thornhill will also be sending 16 Stars made by local artists Paula White, Ayla White and Megan Sauls to a ceremony in New York. Those 16 Stars will be handed over to the families of the crash victims from Moorhead. It’s also happening in Grosbeck, Texas, where Stars of Hope began.
“We’re going to Moorhead to kind of be able to put some closure on the plane crash,” Thornhill said. “We want to connect it to New York and the Foundation. Jeff Parness, the organizer, his given a lot of publicity to it. He’s even contacted Ellen DeGeneres. This is Columbia to Moorhead and beyond because it goes far beyond.”
Parness, the founder of New York Says Thank You, spoke about the history of the foundation and the upcoming involvement with all of the various entities.
“This has become a global movement,” he said. “After 9/11, 16 years ago, there were people from small towns and big cities all around the United States and around the world who went out of their way and showed up in New York to help us in our time of need. It could have been working at Ground Zero on the rescue and recovery effort, it was all acts of kindness – people handing out water or praying with people on the subway. That act of kindness, that compassion from people all around the world really changed us as New Yorkers. We realized that we weren’t invincible and that we’re not alone.”
Parness himself suffered a tremendous loss on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Me personally, I lost my business partner and dear friend Hagay Shefi, who was killed in the World Trade Center,” he said. “I wanted to do something to honor his memory and I wasn’t sure what to do.
“Two years after 9/11, my 5-year-old son, Evan, saw a story on television about the San Diego wildfires. He wanted to send his toys to the kids across the country. Within three days, we had 500 people load up a truck in New York that me and two friends of mine drove to Sand Diego full of relief supplies. We put a big sign on the side that said, ‘New York Says Thank You.’ It was not only a way of paying tribute to my friend, Hagay, but I wanted to make a bigger statement that New Yorkers will never forget what people did for us in our time of need.”
The foundation grew and branched out across the county.
“A few months later, my son, who was 5, this was 2003, was watching the Weather Channel, and he came into my home office and said, ‘When Josh and I grow up can we drive the truck when there’s a tornado in Iowa?’ That’s when I realized that I would never get back to my corporate finance world,” Parness said. “That inspiration from a 5-year-old child led to the creation of the New York Says Thank You Foundation. We made a determination that every year on 9/11, we would take volunteers from New York and send them somewhere in the country where they had a disaster and build something. It started out as a disaster relief organization and grew into and educational organization, it grew into an arts based organization with the Stars of Hope Program. We’ve had more than 600,000 volunteers of all ages in all 50 states and we’ve now touched tens of millions of people with our projects in 24 countries.”
Parness has visited Columbia on multiple occasions, including after the Dec. 23, 2014 EF-3 tornado.
“We came down to see if there were any rebuilding projects that we could be a help at,” he said. “In the end, what we decided was to help Carlton (Thornhill) facilitate the first Stars of Hope project on the Courthouse Square that they did on Governor’s Day. We’ve been doing Stars of Hope for 10 years and it’s a way for kids and families to express compassion through creativity, but more importantly, it’s a way for them to connect, whether it is in their own community, across the State of Mississippi or across the country or around the world.
“These Stars of Hope have now shown up in more than 150 communities in 24 countries after natural or man-made disasters.”
More information on the foundation can be found on the Stars of Hope USA Facebook page or at www.starsofhopeusa.org.
“On Facebook this morning, we actually posted photos of children in Katmandu, Nepal who survived the earthquake two years ago,” Parness said Tuesday. “Two years ago, we flew volunteers out there on the 9/11 anniversary to paint Stars of Hope with kids who had survived an earthquake where 8,000 people had died. It’s a way to empower them. This morning, the kids in Nepal painted Stars of Hope for Texas and Louisiana. What Columbia is a part of is really this global movement of hope. It’s just a way for individuals to stop and know that they can make a difference. There is a lot of tragedy in the world – some close to home and some across the world. I think the way we were created by a higher power is to help one another. Sometimes it’s not easy to figure out, but anyone could pick up a paintbrush, even if you’re not an artist, and write the word hope or love or create a design. In that simple action, you’re really fulfilling your mission to help somebody else.”
The Stars, some of which can still be seen around Marion County, are visible reminders, according to Parness.
“We’ve received thousands of messages now from people around the world who years after the tragedy still take time to write us notes,” he said. “They’ll say things like, ‘You have no idea how much this Star of Hope meant.’ We had an email once from someone who had lost their home in Hurricane Sandy, and she wrote a very personal note that she was ready to give up and she saw a Star on a telephone pole in her block that said, ‘This too shall pass.’ She was inspired to go on. You just never know who is going to see it at the moment they need it the most.”
The Stars are a reminder for Parness and others of the good in the world.
It’s a reminder that there are good people in this world and that we do get through tragedy by coming together,” he concluded. “That’s what these Stars are about. They are beacons of compassion and life.”
Pictured Above: Stars of Hope such as these were sent across the state for next week’s event. | Photo by Mark Rogers
