Sept. 11 hero Jeremy Glick was forced to take a year off from UR so he could work to pay his tuition. Now alumni are starting a scholarship to commemorate the Class of 1993 graduate. The fund will give financial assistance to students in fraternities and sororities, honoring Glick’s commitment to the Greek community while helping those in financial hardship.
On his way to a business trip in California, Glick was a passenger on United Flight 93. Shortly before the plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, Glick phoned his wife, who told him that two planes had already hit the World Trade Center towers. Glick is believed to have led the plane’s passengers in an attack to stop the hijackers from reaching their target.
Alumni from Alpha Delta Phi, Glick’s fraternity, have collaborated to raise funds for the scholarship.
“We wanted to find some way to memorialize Jeremy on campus,” said Class of 1998 graduate Aron Reina, who is head of the graduate chapter of ADF. “He was really devoted to making things better for Greeks on campus. This scholarship will recognize the sacrifices he made to pay for his education, and hopefully will allow others not to have to do the same thing.”
The scholarship will benefit not only ADF members, but the entire Greek community.
“His influence in the Greek community was tremendous,” said junior Rob Lamonica, current president of ADF. “Our fraternity was too small a goal. He was so much more globally oriented.”
The alumni have been soliciting funds through phone calls, mailings, alumni newsletters and the fraternity Web site.
Although nothing has been finalized, the two main criteria for the scholarship will be Greek involvement and financial need. It will be awarded annually, and the number of recipients will depend on the amount of money raised.
“We’re at least a year off from awarding anything,” Reina said.
In addition to serving as president of ADF, Glick was an English major, captain of the rugby team and a national collegiate judo competitor. At the time of his death, he was a strategic account manager for Vividence Inc. He and his wife Lizbeth had a 3-month-old daughter, Emerson.
Glick’s freshman hallmate and pledge brother Ron Zaykowski remembers Glick as “a great guy.”
“He was someone who could always make you laugh,” Zaykowski told the Campus Times in the days after Sept. 11. “He was a great leader for the fraternity and gave the fraternity his strength when it was going through a hard time.”
“Everything I’ve heard about the man is larger than life,” Reina said. “No one I talked to was surprised about what he did.”
Contributions to the fund can be sent to the Jeremy Glick Memorial Scholarship Fund, University of Rochester, Gift Office, 30 Wallis Hall, Rochester, NY 14627.
Le can be reached at cle@campustimes.org.
