Chapter 23 - The Scholarship
Black Hawk Meats held first Frank and Marie Dawson Hourly Family Scholarship seven years after hose.
I hated name.
Plant HR insisted donor fund required label.
“Use Marie’s name first.”
They did.
MARIE AND FRANK DAWSON FAMILY OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP.
First recipient:
A seventeen-year-old girl whose mother worked sanitation nights.
Nursing school.
Second:
Maintenance worker’s son studying welding engineering.
Third:
Single father doing community-college accounting.
I attended ceremony once.
Then stopped because praise embarrassed me.
The fund was not revenge against Brian.
It came from realization.
I spent life wishing my son could outrun embarrassment of working-class roots.
Maybe better gift was teaching other kids roots were not shameful.
Brian learned about scholarship.
At dinner he said:
“Mom would like that.”
“Yes.”
Then:
May you like
“I do too.”
I believed him.
