Dollars for Scholars awards 19 scholarships

Post date: Jul 27, 2012 6:11:27 PM

Events

Dollars for Scholars awards 19 scholarships

By HERB BROCK

Staff Writer

As home to two well-regarded public school systems, the state's school for the deaf and nationally-renowned Centre College, Danville has long touted its reputation as a community that cares about education. A rapidly-growing scholarship program is providing more evidence to support that claim.

A year ago the Danville-Boyle County Dollars for Scholars Foundation awarded a single $1,000 scholarship. On Wednesday night the organization formally presented 19 scholarships valued at $10,500, including 17 $500 awards and two $1,000 scholarships.

At a ceremony at the Toy Box Deli, the foundation honored 17 2004 graduates of Danville and Boyle County high schools who are winners of $500 scholarships and one Danville '04 graduate, Adam Hoover, with the $1,000 John Arnold Memorial Scholarship. The foundation also renewed the $1,000 scholarship of 2003 John C. Arnold Memorial Scholarship winner Mitch Massaro, an '03 Danville graduate who received the organization's first-ever award.

"We have been extremely pleased with the community support we have received since we began the foundation," said William R. Erwin, a Danville attorney who serves as president of the foundation. "We're delighted to give these 19 young people a little help toward their post-secondary educations."

Erwin also is delighted with the remarkable growth of the foundation since its inception just a little over a year ago.

"To think that we held our first board meeting in April 2003 and were able just a few months later to award our first scholarship, the John Arnold Memorial for $1,000, is incredible," he said.

"This is a great reflection of the importance that this community places in education. It's one thing to say education is important; it's another to underwrite that importance," he said.

Erwin acknowledged there are numerous post-secondary scholarship programs that "provide invaluable assistance to local high school graduates wanting to go to college and other post-secondary schools," including the Lottie Ellis scholarship fund, which is similar to Dollars for Scholars. But he said Dollars for Scholars is unique.

"Dollars for Scholars is totally a grassroots program founded and funded by local people, managed and overseen by local people, and set up for local students," he said.

The foundation plans to reach the point where it will be able to offer a smorgasbord of its own scholarships and also serve as a clearinghouse for other local scholarship programs. He said scholarships can be custom-made with donors establishing, endowing and designing awards for specific kinds of students or they can be general in nature and funded by undesignated donations.

Scholarship Winners

Copyright The Advocate-Messenger 2004