Local history buffs will have a field day in 2009. The year 2009 will see the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of Bothell. The Northshore School District will have been consolidated 50 years earlier in 1959. The Northshore Scholarship Foundation will assemble its recipients for the 25th annual scholarship recognition event.
Local governance, education and public recognition and support of the community’s youths are important cornerstones deserving our attention, reflection and encouragement.
Northshore Scholarship Foundation awarded 85 scholarships at its 24th anniversary event earlier this month, the more than $143,000 in grants raised locally by the Woodinville and Northshore Rotary clubs, Kiwanis Club of Northshore and through the 52 memorial family endowments managed by the foundation. This brought to 1,210 the number of scholarships awarded during this period. The total value of this educational support is over $1.4 million.
Two new endowments were announced. Immediate past school board chair B-Z Davis announced plans for a memorial to school superintendent Karen Ann Olson Forys. Two scholarships will be available in 2009, focusing on either education or the performing arts, with one each for a teacher in the district or a graduating senior from one of the district’s four secondary schools.
The second will be established by Woodinville Rotary to provide scholarship dollars for students interested in taking advantage of educational programs at the Sammamish Valley-centered 21 Acres, the organization promoting locally gown food and sustainable living. These bring the total endowments to 52.
At the May 20 breakfast, recipients took the opportunity to introduce themselves and tell of their future plans.
I noted that more and more awardees are trending toward the “helping professions” — a good sign for the future. It seems more are planning to attend colleges in the state of Washington although a number already have designs on schools in New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Hawaii, Texas and Colorado, for example.
The chosen fields of study represent a steadily growing variety, including for those interested in special education teaching, landscape architecture, advertising, musical theater, marine biology, pre-medicine, welding and fabrication, nursing, construction management, fashion design, nutrition, business, environmental health science and communications — just to provide a sampling.
Breakfast highlights
The foundation’s sponsoring service clubs took a special moment to recognize “semi-retiring” Joanne Harkonen during the breakfast. Joanne has handled the monumental task of coordinating the 39 organizations and families involved in interviewing and selecting scholarship recipients from among nearly 1,0000 applications received each year. She has handled this work the last 15 years and will soon turn that assignment over to Sally Barnum, but agreeing to serve in a backup role.
Kiwanis President Pat Parkhurst, Woodinville Rotary President Rick Pisani and Northshore Rotary President Tom Weathers each presented Joanne with a hosta plant for her yard, notwithstanding the fact she barely made it to and through the breakfast, having acquired more aches and pains than she could recount, the result of another favorite past-time — gardening.
The Rev. Greg Jackson has been a familiar face at the annual recognition event since the Richard Hart Memorial scholarship was established by a family bequest. The scholarship is for a member of the Bothell United Methodist Church family where Greg has served as pastor for many years and will be retiring from the pulpit in June of this year.
Assistant Northshore School Superintendent John Bond will retire this year as head of elementary education for the district, having worked in the district as an administrator in a number of elementary and junior high schools since 1972. Although retiring from service with the district, John will not leave education behind as he has signed on at Seattle Pacific University as a professor teaching classes for aspiring school principals. And, John takes on the presidency of the Northshore Rotary Club in July.
Retirement for Assistant School Superintendent Eric Barnum (secondary education) also looms this year, but Eric appears to be still pondering his retirement schedule. He’ll continue to serve as president of the scholarship foundation and will work in some travel. Eric joined the district in 1971.
While setting up the Northshore Senior Center the day prior to the event, Eric was fascinated by one of the students among those recruited to help prepare for the 300 or so breakfast attendees, this young man whiling away a lull in the action by sitting down at the piano to pass the time. The student was Ian Kim from Inglemoor High. Ian came back early the next day to tickle the ivories for the recipients, parents, friends of education, service-club members and community leaders who packed the senior center one more year to recognize the efforts of so many promising young citizens of our communities.
John B. Hughes was owner-publisher of the Northshore Citizen from 1961 to 1988 and is active in local nonprofit organizations.
