Telling the
SPU
Endowment
Story
One Person
at a
Time
By Clint Kelly
The Kelley Pre-Med Scholarship Endowment
The Swantstrom Centurion Scholarship Endowment
The Sigma Rho Scholarship Endowment
The Sarah Louise Knight Wimpy Scholarship Endowment
The Doris Heritage Scholarship Endowment
Ed, Joshua and Marie Kelley |
Woven into the account of Seattle Pacific University's endowment are hundreds of individual stories. There are stories of children, spouses, siblings, professors and friends honored by the establishment of endowments in their names; of people who wanted to make it possible for others to experience what they found at Seattle Pacific; and of students who benefit from the generosity and foresight of people they do not even know.
Here are only a few of the personal threads which make up the SPU endowment story:
The Kelley Pre-Med Scholarship Endowment
By the time most medical doctors successfully complete medical school, they have usually incurred large financial debts. Sadly, most young Christian physicians are thus prevented from applying their skills on the mission field. They simply can't afford to go.
Ed Kelley and Marie Rusher Kelley '66 want to do what they can to support SPU's pre-med students interested in medical missions. In honor of their two-year-old son, Matthew, who died in a 1984 drowning accident, the Kelleys established a full-ride scholarship to help lift the burden of a medical education.
Marie knows all about the high cost of medical school. After graduation from Seattle Pacific's nursing program, she earned a medical degree from the University of Washington and took a pediatrics residency at UCLA.
She had decided on a career in medicine while spending three years as a nurse at a 100-bed hospital in South Africa for the General Missionary Board of the Free Methodist Church. She vividly recalls when the three doctors on staff became ill at the same time, but the daily stream of Zulu and Xhosa patients kept coming.
"I was placed in charge of things. We delivered babies; had a whole wing for tuberculosis patients; and worked with lots of malnutrition, measles, tetanus and intestinal parasites.
"Dr. Paul Embree (a 1948 graduate of Seattle Pacific) was down with hepatitis. I'd go present a case to him while he was on his sick bed, and he'd tell me what to do. I learned a lot of medicine in those four months!"
Marie dreamed of one day returning to Africa as a fully-trained doctor, but it was never to be. Marriage, children and a medical career back home took priority.
"We want to help someone go in my place," she says. "I loved Seattle Pacific and we had hopes that our Matthew would one day go there. This is a way we can support another in his place, too."
The Swanstrom Centurion Scholarship Endowment
Countless Seattle Pacific alumni name Emeritus History Professor Roy Swanstrom one of their most influential teachers and mentors, a man whose legacy shines from equal parts of compassion and intellect.
Few understand this better, or experienced it more intimately, than the Centurions, the upper division service honorary for male students of high standing and leadership ability. Swanstrom founded the group in 1959 and was its advisor for 20 of the 26 years he spent in the Seattle Pacific classroom.
To honor Swanstrom for the outstanding "professor, friend and Christian gentleman" that he was, colleagues Alec Hill, Ed Smyth and Bill Woodward established the Roy Swanstrom Centurion Scholarship Endowment in 1989.
"Roy was very humbled and pleased to learn of the scholarship," his wife, Marie-Ann, says of her husband, who died last year. "He had a vision of what God could do with these bright young men."
It was Roy's great joy to have 20-25 Centurions fill his basement for their weekly meetings. He loved circulating among them and singing "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" with them at the end of each gathering.
"Roy was always concerned about the high cost of a private Christian education," says Barry Solem '61, a former student of Swanstrom's and a contributor to the endowment. "He saw the difference Seattle Pacific made in young people's lives and he did all he could to help them get that education."
Sig Swanstrom '73 says his father went out of his way to know the students chosen to receive the scholarship bearing his name. "He believed each could be a world class Christian who loved God with all his heart, mind, soul and strength."
Kelly Smith, the 1996-97 Centurion scholarship recipient, plans to teach at the elementary school level. He was nominated by his peers for how well he, like Swanstrom before him, shares his faith in all aspects of life.
The Sigma Rho Scholarship Endowment
When Sigma Rho first met in 1937, it was unapologetically a social club for women connected to Seattle Pacific College. "Sigma" and "Rho," the Greek letters for "S" and "P" in "Seattle Pacific," was their way of saying how much their alma mater meant to them.
Before long, they decided to make a more tangible contribution to the school. Because there was a great deal of interest in home economics among the women, they began to supply that department with kitchen utensils and other equipment. Then, in the late 1980s, they decided that because of the changing nature of the discipline known today as family and consumer sciences, they could do more by generating student scholarships.
Funds for the Sigma Rho Scholarship Endowment now flow in from club members, their families, other alumni and friends. Occasional scholarship fund-raising events held throughout the year include silent auctions, plant sales and art gallery tours.
"Our challenge now," says Mary Klein, a 1946 graduate and historian of Sigma Rho, "is to get younger women to join us."
A maximum of 60 club members meet monthly in various homes for programs and speakers, and to oversee the granting of one of the largest endowed scholarships SPU awards.
The 1996-97 recipient was Erica Treibel, a senior concentrating in elementary education with a family life emphasis. She discovered while working as a student teacher with homeless kindergarten students how critical family involvement is to a child's success, whether he or she has a permanent address or not.
"We had several kids bussed in from homeless shelters in the area," says Treibel. "One little girl without a dad just attached herself to me and wanted to go home with me. She was so intelligent. She was really in need of warmth and affection so she could succeed in school."
In part because of the scholarship help from the women of Sigma Rho, Treibel says she'll be prepared to enter the community armed with hope and affirmation for just such kids.
The Sarah Louise Knight Wimpy Scholarship Endowment
Rachel Steen will soon have her nursing license and set sail for Benin on Africa's Ivory Coast aboard a medical mercy ship. "We'll stop in different ports and do reconstructive surgeries on kids with cleft palettes and serious injuries, like one little boy who was attacked by a gorilla," she says. "We'll also visit in the villages, give immunizations and teach nutrition."
When she returns, Steen would like to become a public health nurse in a low-income neighborhood.
Steen's parents struggled to help her complete her first three years at Seattle Pacific University. "From then on, I had to rely totally on God's grace and provision," says Rachel. "I couldn't have continued without scholarship help."
Which is just the kind of faith outlook and financial need that David and Alice Knight support through the Sarah Louise Knight Wimpy Scholarship Endowment. Their daughter, Sarah, was killed along with her husband and two children in a head-on collision with a drunk driver nine years after her graduation from SPU.
"She had a great love of Christ," David says of his daughter, who graduated from the School of Health Sciences in 1979. "These scholarships aren't large, but may be the little bit of encouragement needed for someone to pursue the nursing dream as our Sarah did.
"We want her faith and love to continue. This scholarship keeps her close to us and is a way for us to say how much we loved her."
As many as four students a year receive a scholarship from the Knight endowment fund. Whenever the couple receives a letter of thanks from one of "our girls" at SPU like Rachel Steen, it's a happy reminder of the living memorial they've established.
"We have great respect for Seattle Pacific, but I remember how hard we worked and schemed to pay for Sarah's years in private college," says David, a retired trust officer. "This is meant to help other families who must struggle financially."
The Doris Heritage Scholarship Endowment
This was an exciting season for Seattle Pacific University track coach Doris Heritage. Her women's cross country team won their first-ever NCAA West Region championship and went on to place eighth at nationals.
It was a particularly gratifying performance to the athlete in Heritage. The Seattle Pacific Alumnus of the Year for 1970 is the winner of 14 US distance running titles and five straight world cross country events. Heritage was named to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and competed in two Olympics, setting a world record at 3,000 meters in 1971. She is credited with having pioneered female participation in the sport.
It is the kind of sterling career that fires the imaginations and garners the financial support of track and cross country alumni, parents of students involved in both sports, and other faculty and staff members.
It is also the kind of performance that inspires junior Sheila Larkin of Richland, Washington. A member of this year's winning cross country team, she is a recipient of the Doris Heritage Cross Country/Track Scholarship.
"Coach Heritage cares about us and has such a good heart," says Larkin, who plans to major in psychology. "She has the team over to her house for dinner and takes us to Mount Rainier to run and hike. The scholarship was a great extra I didn't expect. I felt encouraged that I was recognized as an athlete."
Larkin made her first cross country team in the eighth grade. She loves the freedom of the ever-changing terrain and the teamwork required for a win. The scholarship allows her to pursue those things at SPU, where "I have found things that I can't get at other schools, like many Christian friends."
The track endowment was established by Stan Newell at Seattle's First Free Methodist Church, where Heritage attends. He wanted to honor an accomplished individual while still living, and the fund he started now includes contributions from many like-minded individuals who know a champion when they see one.
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Send any questions, comments or correspondence about Response to
jgilnett@spu.edu
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