Scholarships

Union City, population approximately 10,000, is the county seat of Obion County, total population 32,000. We are an agriculture community mixed with manufacturing in rural northwest Tennessee. We have two school systems: Union City System which has about 88 graduating each year and Obion County School System with two high schools: Obion County Central High School with about 225 graduating each year and South Fulton High School graduating about 60 each year.

The Union City Rotary Club was chartered September 2, 1936. We have 136 members in our club. In 1982 when Gus White (one of our charter members and past district governor), died a trust fund of $10,000 was set up for a scholarship in his memory. Hardy Graham started this trust with a $1,000 donation. Gus White's son and two grandsons are active in our club today. In 1983 Old & Third National Bank (now Commercial Bank) had 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 we jumped to $5,000 and exploded from that point as seen below:

The Union City Rotary Club awards total over $3,200,000 since 1982 and have helped over 2,050 students. John Pylant was chairman of the committee from 1982 to 1985. David Critchlow was chairman from 1985 to 1994. Clay Woods was chairman from 1994 to 2004 and Roger Williams has been chairman since 2005. Today our committee consists of Roger Williams, Newell Graham, Clint Joiner, Ron Green, Bob Regen, Steve Vaughn and Gary Houston.

In May of 2002, our Club received a gift from an estate in the amount of $3,500,000. The income from this money will be awarded on a need basis to students who attended Union City High School and have completed one full year of college. As of 2008, we have awarded $656,000 from the Verhine Fund.
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 money to attend college we called on Mr. Hardy. Mr. Hardy passed away in 2007, but he will always be remembered as a strong supporter of our program.

Our money is raised in several different ways:

• Some money comes from annual donations from individuals and companies. Once we are in a company's budget it makes raising money each year from that company easier.
  
  
• Some money is funded to honor a person living or deceased. The money is invested and the interest generated funds the scholarship each year.
  
  
• Some money comes to us through codicils in wills.
  
  
• Some 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. In a lot of instances, if $2,500 is raised through this method, a funded scholarship is created.

We now have approximately $500,000 in a trust fund where the interest is awarded in scholarships. We have another $200,000, left in a will by Madge and Elmo Short, who were long time teachers at Hornbeak, and the income from this money will go to students majoring in education from one of our county schools.

The members of the committee have certain jobs that they perform each year. We do not change members on the committee very often; in fact it has been rumored that you have to die to get off the committee.

The accounting firm of Alexander, Thompson & Arnold handles the collections and disbursements of all moneys. The checks are issued on a semester basis and are made out to the college and the student. We now have over 300 applications annually, and it takes many hours of work by the committee to make these awards.

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 and check on their progress during the year. A great number of our scholarship recipients are from divorced homes and a large number of the 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 scholarship and the interest generated creates a $2,500 award each year. We now send an application to each student who received an award the previous year and have a large number of upperclassmen awards. Several years ago we started trying to get a "Technology" program started for Vo-Tech 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 needed carpenters, plumbers, electricians, electronic (computer trained auto mechanics, etc.), computer repairmen, masons, etc.; a student could make a great living with training from 9 months to 2 or 3 years. I recently read an article in USA Today, which 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 cost are the result of faulty diagnoses by technicians. That creates billions of dollars a year in waste associated with unnecessary labor and parts.

A very critical part of our program is the high school guidance counselor. We pass the applications to these guidance counselors; they are the ones who get the applications back to us. They stay on the students to get them filled out correctly and turned in. We find a large number of students accept the fact that they cannot attend college or go to Vo-Tech training and this is one area that we really make a difference. We have a cut off of April 1 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 from 1 to 10 on each student and it is amazing that we almost always are within one point of each other. We then rank the students by school and the highest ranked students get the highest 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 by giving leadership, scholarships, time and coverage in the local newspaper.

We believe very strongly in our Rotary International Foundation and contribute anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 each annually. Our club makes that contribution directly from dues. Our club honors two to four members each year with the Paul Harris Fellow award, which is our club's highest honor.

We are a separate non-profit corporation and report to our local Rotary Club Board of Directors. Most of our scholarships are need-based and as long as they can get accepted into college or Vo-Tech that is all we are concerned with regards to academic achievement.

Our program has had a major impact on a large number of student's lives over the years. Thank you for your interest in the Union City Rotary Club's Scholarship Program.

Click here to Apply for a Rotary Scholarship online.