This Memorial Day, consider helping an organization that
helps the children of fallen military members attend college. Children of
Fallen Patriots Foundation helps students across the country fulfill the dreams
their parents had for them. You can learn more at www.fallenpatriots.org and here is one of their stories.
Having lost two parents by the time he
was 15, Daniel Irizarry didn’t lead an easy childhood. Rather than turning down
a dark path, Danny followed in his father’s uniformed footsteps. With the
financial help of Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation and his own perseverance,
Danny graduated from the University of New Haven in Connecticut and now
protects the city of New York as a police officer.
When Danny was ten years old, his
mother lost her battle with cancer. Four years later, his father, Army Staff
Sergeant Henry Irizarry, was killed in Iraq when an improvised explosive device
detonated near his Humvee.
Danny’s father never settled for
excuses and after his father’s death, Danny used this mentality to get through
his difficult time. He thought, “why live my ‘boo hoo’ story when I can get up
on my own two feet?”
Getting up on his own two feet is
exactly what he did. He set a goal to graduate from his dream school, the
University of New Haven, and achieved it. After the excitement of being
enrolled in the school he had always wanted to attend wore off, Danny began to
panic – the University of New Haven was, indeed, his dream school, but it was
also a private school and tuition was adding up quickly.
Danny placed a call to Children of
Fallen Patriots Foundation, and it became a day he will never forget. After
explaining his situation, he remembers hearing “No worries. You’re going to
send us the bill and we’re going to take care of you.”
Danny graduated from his dream school
with a degree in criminal justice. Two weeks after graduation, he received a
call from the New York Police Department’s Police Academy. For more than a
year, Danny has been helping to clean up the city’s worst neighborhoods in the
South Bronx.
Danny knows his father would have had
“the utmost respect for his current profession because he would have understood
the gravity of being a police officer in the Bronx.” With Danny protecting
them, we have no doubt that the people of New York are safe. It’s stories like
his that motivate Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation to continue our
mission to provide college scholarships to military children who have lost a
parent in the line of duty.
To learn more about Children of Fallen Patriots
Foundation and how you can help, please visit www.fallenpatriots.org
To help Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation in
their Memorial Day Challenge to raise $30,000 (the average cost of a
scholarship for just one student), donate at: www.crowdrise.com/MemorialDayChallenge
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