Scholarships
Union City, population 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:
| 1982 $1,000 | 1993 $61,750 |
| 1983 $4,000 | 1994 $68,000 |
| 1984 $5,000 | 1995 $80,500 |
| 1985 $9,500 | 1996 $96,250 |
| 1986 $18,000 | 1997 $119,850 |
| 1987 $21,500 | 1998 $129,435 |
| 1988 $37,000 | 1999 $121,000 |
| 1989 $45,250 | 2000 $131,750 |
| 1990 $56,000 | 2001 $139,100 |
| 1991 $58,500 | 2002 $140,000 |
| 1992 $59,000 | 2003 $353, 375 |
In 2002 we had 15 different donors. In some cases we combined scholarships and awarded 117 scholarships for an average of $1165. per scholarship. Our awards total some $1,259,385 since 1982 and have helped some 1,255 students. John Pylant was chairman of the committee from 1982 to 1985. David Critchlow was chairman from 1985 to 1994. Clay Woods has been chairman since 1994. Today our committee consists of David Critchlow, Newell Graham, Charles Kirkland, Dr. Travis Shumate, Bill Simrell, Steve Vaughn, Allen Rogers, Chuck Cloud, Roger Williams and Clay Woods.
In May 2002 we received from an estate for $3,500,000. This income from this money will be awarded on a need bases to children who have completed one full year of college. This should generate close to $200,000 income. This means that in 2003 we should award close to $350,000 to students to attend higher education from Obion County.
Hardy Graham has been the "Conerstone" 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. 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:
We now have about $500,000 in a trust fund where the interest is awarded in scholarships. We also have been awarded $3,500,000 from an estate and this money is invested and the income from it is awarded to students who have completed one year of college. We have another $200,000 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. We have another will which has $250,000 in it for our program.
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 you have to die to get off the committee.
The accounting firm of Dunn, Creswell and Sparks handles the collections of all moneys and we pay them $150 per month. They deposit the money with Edward D. Jones where the money is invested in secure bonds or money markets funds. Jim Dunn, of the accounting firm of Dunn, Creswell, & Sparks (is where the students go to receive their money) and Jim issue the checks. The checks are issued on a semester basis and are made out to the college and the student. Charles Kirkland spends about 40 hours doing a spreadsheet on each of the applicants showing certain items that are important for each committee member to have during the interview process. We now have over 248 applications, which contain several pages of pertinent information each year and all of the members of the committee cannot have access to them at the interview. The spread sheet 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. We also leave room on the spreadsheet for the committee member to make notes.
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, etc. 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 $2500 award each year. We now send an application to each student who received an award the previous year and have a large number of upper classman awards. Several years ago we started trying to get a "Technology" program going 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, brick layers, 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.
This year we did a summary of the upperclassman that had applied for another scholarship. We found that of 86 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. 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 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 in giving leadership, scholarships, and time and newspaper coverage.
We believe very strongly in our Rotary International Foundation and contribute anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 each year. 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 clubs highest honor.
We are a separate nonprofit 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 about in the area of grades.
Our program has had a major impact on a large number of student's lives over the years.
Copyright 2004 Union City Rotary Club P.O. Box 275 Union City, TN 38281 E-mail: info@unioncityrotary.org
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