Every Long Islander knows the Ferris wheel on Route 110. Fewer know that the family name behind it has quietly become one of the Island's steadier sources of college money. This month, Adventureland's Helping Hands Foundation handed thirteen Long Island students $5,000 scholarships apiece, a combined $65,000, at the amusement park's annual fundraising night in Farmingdale.

The scholarship named for the founders

The awards come through the Vivian and Tony Gentile Scholarship Program, named for two members of the family that has run Adventureland for generations. Tony Gentile, one of the park's founding fathers, had long wanted a way to give back to the Island that filled the park's midway every summer, and the Helping Hands Foundation was created in his memory in 2013 to do exactly that.

Thirteen years on, the numbers have added up. The scholarship program alone has now put more than $397,000 toward the college educations of Long Island students. Winners this year came from schools across both Nassau and Suffolk, and each received the awards at the foundation's annual V.I.P. Fundraising Night, held at the park on September 18, an evening that doubles as the foundation's biggest fundraiser of the year.

More than a ride park

The scholarships are one piece of a larger operation that most park visitors never see. Since 2013 the foundation has raised more than $2.1 million for Long Island causes. Over $850,000 of it has gone out as grants and in-kind support to Island nonprofits, a list that includes Island Harvest, Nassau Suffolk Services for Autism, Good Samaritan Hospital, Stony Brook's dental school and its Child Life program, which supports hospitalized children. Another $140,000 and counting has gone out the door as donated supplies.

The mechanism funding all of it is the one Long Islanders already love: the park itself. Adventureland has been on Route 110 since 1962, long enough that grandparents who rode the coasters as kids now watch their grandchildren do the same. The foundation turns some of that sixty-plus years of goodwill into checks for food banks, hospitals and now a new generation of college freshmen.

Halloween is about to get bigger

The giving continues into the fall, and this part comes with a date worth circling. On Saturday, October 31, the park hosts Pumpkin Park, its Halloween tradition of more than 35 years, where families trick-or-treat along Sweet Street inside the park from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event draws over three thousand visitors a year.

For the first time, the Helping Hands Foundation is sponsoring the day, and it is using the occasion to spread the wealth further. Up to fifteen Long Island nonprofit organizations are being brought in to host tables along Sweet Street, handing out candy to costumed kids. Each participating nonprofit receives complimentary tickets, candy to distribute, event-wide recognition and a $1,000 donation from the foundation. For a small local charity, that is a day of visibility in front of thousands of families plus a check, in exchange for showing up with a table.

What it means for the Island

Long Island does not have many homegrown institutions left that span four generations of childhood. Adventureland is one of them, and there is something fitting about the park converting six decades of ride tickets and boardwalk games into tuition help. A $5,000 scholarship does not pay for college, but it pays for books, a meal plan, or the gap that decides whether a student takes on another loan.

Thirteen families on Long Island are finishing September with that gap closed, courtesy of the park where most of them probably spent a birthday or two. And on Halloween, the Ferris wheel will be turning over a fundraiser dressed up as a candy run. The park that has spent sixty years making Long Island childhoods now has a growing record of funding what comes after them.