Donna giving a speech about the history of the bench

Melissa Scardaville came up with the idea to do a permanent memorial to Another World. She connected with the Central Park Conservancy and found out that it would cost us $5,000 to get a bench. At Blondie's Sports Bar the first year we gathered June 2000 we auctioned off several items. I had an extra copy of the out-of-print hard-to-find Harding "Pete" Lemay book EIGHT YEARS IN ANOTHER WORLD. (1981) We auctioned it off for around a thousand dollars. We auctioned off one of Victoria's statues. We auctioned off one of the paintings from the Cory living room. We were still going to have to come up with more money. We decided to do tape auctions. We'd make videotapes and offer them to the fans. We came up with 4 tapes to do: (1) Mac & Rachel, (2) The Lovely Ada, (3) A Cory Christmas, and (4) Rachel & Carl. Any fan could pick the tape they wanted and send us $10 for it & we would send it to them. I handled all the Post Office and banking. Carolyn Williams (RIP) kept 3 VCRS set up & connected to each other all the time & she did all the dubbing & editing. By the second year we got together, in June 24, 2001, we had enough money and we had had a plaque made & put on the Bench & we had a dedication ceremony.