Salng Scholarship Recipients

 

 

 

          Last call: The final gathering of the Rotary year is the installation dinner for new officers, starts at 6 p.m., Monday, June 22, at the home of Art and Robin Rudd, 1604 W. Fairway Drive, near the Spokane Country Club.  Sign up via e-mail with President-elect Lenore Romney.  No luncheon meeting that day.

 

          No meetings: The club’s summer break means no meetings June 29 or July 6.  Luncheon meetings resume July 13.

 

          Congrats!!: President Jon Heideman announced that nearly $20,000 was raised for Holmes School projects through the fund-raising drive, including Hawaiian Night.  Expenses totaled about $6,000, so net proceeds were about $14,000, a club record.  Congratulations to chief program coordinator Jodi Harland, her able lieutenants and all others who helped make the drive a huge success.

 

            Andrew Elliot Boharski wants to follow in the footsteps (paw prints?) of his parents.  He will study biotechnology in animal systems and Spanish at Montana State University.

 

          Hannah Sylvester will study biology in a pre-med curriculum and Spanish at Carroll College in Helena, Mont.  She plans someday to become a neonatal surgeon.  

 

          Andrew and Hannah are the club’s 2015 Jerry L. Saling Scholars.  Each received a $1,500 check from scholarship committee chair Jim Minkler at the club’s June 15 luncheon.

 

          Andrew, who graduated last week from Mead High, was accompanied by parents Steve, a past club president, and April, both veterinarians who operate the Garland Animal Clinic.

 

          Hannah, a graduate last week at North Central, was accompanied by her dad, Scott Sylvester, who was able to trade accounting stories with Jon Heideman and Bill Simer at the luncheon table.

 

          The scholarship drew 54 entries from high schools all over Spokane County, as well as several college students, and was judged by Minkler, Lenore Romney, Melinda Keberle, Art Rudd and Chuck Rehberg.

Andrew Boharski had a 3.75 grade point average at Mead and was a four-year student in the school’s Project Lead the Way biomedical sciences program.  A wrestling team captain, Andrew placed fourth in state at 138 pounds.

He was active in a variety of associated student activities and a frequent community program volunteer.

 

          “The values that are incorporated in the four-way test have all been related to teachings from my parents.  The value of truth, fairness, relationships and benefit, have been instilled in me since the beginning of my life.

“My parents have taught me to be generous, whether in pecuniary matters or sharing God-given gifts.  It is my duty to share my abilities and it always has been.  Making life fair is not about what a person starts with; it is what everyone, as a whole, ends with.”

 

          So Andrew is off to Bozeman, Mont., in the fall.  After the meeting he and his parents joked about whether they would give him the veterinary practice (Andrew’s idea) or sell it to him (Steve and April’s notion).   “Whatever, we need to expand the building before then,” Andrew said with a smile.

 

          It’s hard to imagine that Hannah Sylvester had a dull moment during high school.

 

          Hannah was an Academic Science Bowl team member, a National Honor Society  member and student director, and, while building a 3.77 GPA, she made honor roll every semester and graduated with 10 advanced placement

courses.  She also was in NC’s acclaimed Genome Studies program, doing research work at a college level.

 

          Despite the academic rigors, Hannah was junior and senior class president and a volunteer at Sacred Heart Medical Center’s surgical care unit and neonatal intensive care unit.  She also served on and chaired the Chase Youth Commission and was a Spokane Police Advisory Committee member.  And she was on the high school advisory board for the Spokane Guilds School and Neuromuscular Center.

 

          Of the Four-Way test, Hannah wrote how her service on the Chase Youth Commission helped her grow from a timid participant with no public speaking experience to a confident leader.

 

          One goal as a student leader, she said, was to interest more NC students in Homecoming and Prom.  Noting that 60 percent of NC students are on the free or reduced-lunch program, she successfully pushed to lower the $40 tickets for prom couples by $10, so more students could afford the event.

 

          “Being the Junior and Senior Class president has truly been one of the most influential experiences of my entire life,” Hannah wrote.

 

          “All in all, I believe I have worked very hard to indirectly value those four qualifications through how I treat people, my hard work and my dedication to the community.”  (Hannah and her family moved here from California when she was in 4^th grade.) “I will continue to do the same, through my volunteer work in college and my eventual occupation.

 

          “I will be a pediatric surgeon one day and will try to be right by patients the best I can.”

 

          Congratulations to Andrew and Hannah, and to their parents.  Our club shares the pride in their accomplishments.  And we think Jerry Saling would approve whole-heartedly.