Drew Miller, who co-chaired the scholarship committee this year, described how the process of choosing the scholarship winners began last December with the creation of the applications. In January, the applications were sent to Griffin High School and Spalding High School and other locations.
Miller then described the history of the William A. Gregory and Earl F. “Rip” Savage scholarships. He told how Gregory began the tradition of the pancake breakfast to help the schools, while Savage picked peaches and ran the peach stand at the Georgia Experiment Station. At one point, Savage secretly paid for two years’ tuition for one of Miller’s friends at Jacksonville State University. When Savage died, his nieces and nephews endowed a scholarship fund in his honor, a fund that now contains $69,000.
A total of 10 William A. Gregory scholarships of $1,000 each and two Earl F. “Rip” Savage scholarships of $1,500 each were awarded at the ceremony.
Club member Andy Campbell then took over. He called forward each recipient of the William A. Gregory Scholarship, stated which high school the student attends, stated where the student is going for college and supplied one tongue-in-cheek “fact” about each scholarship recipient.
He began with Brittany Jackson of Griffin High School, who will be attending Kennesaw State University. Campbell joked that she had recently finished negotiations to play for the Atlanta Braves and break Barry Bonds’ single-season home-run record. Other scholarship winners included Anthony Peek, a Spalding High School senior heading for Duke, Jake Weathington, a Griffin High School senior, and Hannah Carley, a Spalding High School senior who will be attending the University of Georgia.
Scholarship recipients Caitlin Graves, a Griffin High School senior, Morgan Kelley, a home-schooled student bound for Gordon College and eventually Auburn University, and Spalding High School senior William Ward, who plans to attend Georgia Tech, were also recognized by Campbell with a humorous, but not quite true, fact.
Other scholarship recipients were Carli Ellis, a Griffin High School senior who will attend the University of West Georgia, Asa Harold, a senior at Spalding High School who will be attending the University of Georgia, and Curtis Hardwick, a Spalding High School senior who will be attending Georgia Tech.
Derrell Jeffcoat, principal of Spalding High School, presented the Earl F. “Rip” Savage scholarship. The first winner was Jasmine Shackelford, class president at Spalding High, who will be attending Spelman College. The second winner was Claire Miller, a Spalding High School student active in the Writer’s Club, who Jeffcoat described as “creative and funny and full of wit.”
Afterward, Denise Burrell, assistant superintendent of the Griffin-Spalding County School System, thanked the Kiwanis Club on behalf of Superintendent Jesse Bradley and the Griffin-Spalding County Board of Education and credited the students’ parents for being involved in their children’s education.
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