To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

At the St. Jean Baptiste High School on the Upper East Side, student Meilyn Cruz has big dreams.

"I’m thinking about majoring in politics or law. One of those two because I really want to work in government," says Cruz.

A Bart J. Ruggiere Memorial Foundation scholarship is facilitating Cruz in reaching that goal by helping pay her Catholic school tuition.

Ruggiere, a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, was just 32 when he was killed on September 11, 2001.

“Bart loved this city and we look at these children as the future of the city. And how do we help the future of the city and really the country? And it’s through students, it’s through helping them," says Ruggiere’s widow, Claudia Gerbasi.

Gerbasi created the foundation in 2002 after discovering that her late husband had donated to the Inner City Scholarship Fund, which provides tuition assistance for low-income Catholic school students. Since then, the foundation has awarded more than $100,000 in scholarships to 18 students.

“It’s such a rewarding feeling for our whole family to be able to see these children come into the program so young and then for many of them, they are the first kids in their family to go to college," says Gerbasi.

Cruz says she will now become the first in her family to complete high school and enroll in college.

“I want to do what my grandparents couldn’t do and what my parents couldn’t do. And for me, too, because I want to be good, I want to be on top," says Cruz.

Gerbassi maintains a close relationship with each of the students, writing letters, attending special events and helping the scholars obtain internships.

“I want to make a difference and that’s what I’m going to do," says Cruz.

Gerbassi says thinking about her late husband is still difficult, but that she finds comfort in the prospect that Ruggiere’s name will live on through the students the foundation helps.