Scholarship Program History

Union City, population 10,000, is the county seat of Obion County, total population 32,500. We are an agriculture community mixed with manufacturing in rural northwest Tennessee. We have two school systems: Union City School System and the Obion County School System which has two high schools consisting of Obion County Central High School and South Fulton High School.

The Union City Rotary Club was chartered on September 2, 1936. We have 140 members in our club. In 1982 when Gus White (one of our charter members and past district governor) passed away, a trust fund of $10,000 was established for a scholarship in his memory. Hardy Graham started this trust with a $1,000 donation. Gus White's two grandsons are active in our club today. In 1983 Old & Third National Bank (now Commercial Bank) notified us of a trust fund that had been left in a will for scholarships. The trust officer, John Pylant, asked if they could join with us to make the processing of applicants easier. In 1984 the scholarship total jumped to $5,000 and exploded from that point as seen below:

Our scholarship awards total in excess of $1,800,000.00 since 1982 and have helped over 1,500 students. John Pylant was chairman of the committee from 1982 to 1985. David Critchlow was chairman from 1985 to 1994. Clay Woods served as chairman through 2005 until Roger Williams assumed this position in 2006. Today our committee consists of Newell Graham, Steve Vaughn, Roger Williams, Allen Rogers and Clint Joiner.

In May 2002 the Union City Rotary Club received $3,500,000.00 from an estate of a local family. The income from this money will be awarded on a need basis to students who have completed one full year of college. This should generate close to $200,000.00 income per year for scholarships.

Hardy Graham has been the "cornerstone" of our program. He has led the way in donating monies throughout the years and setting an example for other donors. Several times over the years when we did not have money to award a student who deserved or needed funds to attend college, we called on Mr. Hardy. If we had a good reason for asking for the money, he has never turned us down.

Our money is raised in several different ways:

• Money comes from yearly donations from individuals and companies.
• Money is received to honor or memorialize someone.
• Money comes to us through codicils in wills.
• Money comes to us through memorial donations where people will state in the obituary that in lieu of flowers please send a donation to the Rotary Scholarship program. When there is at least $2,500.00 is raised through this method a funded scholarship is created.

Additionally, we now have about $500,000.00 in a trust fund where the interest is awarded in scholarships. We have another $200,000.00 which was left in a will and the income from this money will go to students who are majoring in education from one of our county schools. Finally, there is another will that has $250,000.00 in it for our program.

The accounting firm of Dunn, Creswell and Sparks handles the collections and dispersements of all funds and we pay them $150 per month. They deposit the money with local investment firms where the money is invested in secure bonds or money markets funds. The checks are issued on a semester basis and are made out to the college and the student. Now that the Rotary Scholarship applications are online, we are able to quickly download the student's information into a format that allows the interview committee quick access to the most relevant information needed to score the applicant. This information covers such items as: grade point average, class ranking, major, college to attend, parents marital status, father's employment and income, mother's employment and income, number of children in the home, number of children in college, where the student works and how many hours each week they work, achievements in school, other aid or scholarships the student has received.

Our main theme for the program is to help needy students get a chance to go to college. We started with helping graduating high school seniors get into college who might not have had a chance or motivation to attend. We found a lot of parents did not provide any encouragement for the student to go to college and just wanted the students to get a job and get on their own. A number of the Rotarians get personally involved with the students and help them register for college, complete loan forms and scholarship applications. A great number of our scholarship recipients are from divorced homes where many fathers are not present or involved with the students. We have had several who have not had parents at all. Mr. Hardy Graham started our "Sophomore Program" by creating a funded $35,000.00 scholarship and the interest generated creates a $2,500.00 award each year. We encourage each student who received an award the previous year to apply again allowing us to have a large number of upperclassman awards. Several years ago, we started trying to get a "technology" program going for vocational students. We realized that we were doing some students an injustice by getting them into college; then when they graduated they had no skills and could not find a job. Our rural area needs carpenters, plumbers, electricians, technicians (computer trained auto mechanics, etc.), computer repairmen, brick layers, etc. With the right training, a student can make a great living in these trades. Recently the USA Today stated that training people for a high-tech world is a problem. By 2005, 75% of all new jobs will require technical skills. It is impossible to put a price on what it will cost to address that training crisis nationwide, but it will be expensive if the auto industry is any indication. Interactive Solutions, a unit of Teltronics, claims that 30% of the automotive industry's warranty repair costs are the result of faulty diagnoses by technicians. That creates billions of dollars a year in waste associated with unnecessary labor and parts.

This year we did a summary of the upperclassman that had applied for another scholarship. We found that the applicants they had an average GPA of 3.24 and they averaged working 13.7 hours per week while in college. We feel we are getting a good return on our investment. We think this shows we are awarding scholarships to needy student who have great intellectual ability AND are hard workers. They work 35% of the average workweek and still make good grades. We have found students who work in high school 20, 30 or even 40 hours per week are successful and most continue their work ethic in college by working and making good grades.

A very critical part of our program is the high school guidance counselor. They encourage the students to complete the application and assist with any questions. We find a large number of students accept the fact that they cannot attend college or pursue vocational training, and this is one area that we really make a difference. We have a cut off of April 15th each year for the applications to get to our committee. We normally interview three days during the last of April from 7:00 AM to about 5:00 PM. Each member of the committee votes with a score of 1 to 10 on each student. We then rank the students by school and the highest ranked students get the highest monetary awards.

One of the key ingredients of our program is the coverage our local newspaper gives us. David Critchlow, our former chairman, has been instrumental in our program in giving leadership, scholarships, time and newspaper coverage.

Our program has a storied history and we are committed to insuring that students in our county have an opportunity to apply for a Rotary Scholarship for years to come.