All Those Pennies Add Up

A penny for your thoughts? Even all the thoughts from great minds like Socrates, da Vinci, Newton, Edison and Einstein would have trouble matching the number of pennies collected by Holy Rosary Elementary School in a unique fund-raiser for new library books.

The “Million Penny Project” reached its payoff last week as students, under the supervision of faculty and two armed guards, packed more than 6,000 pounds of pennies into a bullet-proof van from Loomis, Fargo & Co. When filled, the van held more than $10,000, slated to be distributed among several banks in Idaho Falls and Pocatello.

“I think it’s awesome. And amazing,” said sixth-grader Ben Steverson, who first started pinching pennies for the project when he was in the fourth grade. “It’s more than I imagined.”

The 1,107,206 pennies, all counted by hand, were rolled and stacked in $25 boxes or placed in $50 bags for their journey back into circulation. They had been stored in the library in several water cooler bottles, two big aquariums and two plastic swimming pools.

“I hate to think how many pennies are in the country if you guys have just a million of them. That’s just a drop in the bucket,” said Kirk Bitton, southeast Idaho branch manager for Loomis, Fargo & Co., which hauled the pennies away.