The Fugate Family presents the Willow Springs School Foundation with an endowed scholarship to benefit Willow Springs students. Front: Board member Eric Montgomery, school superintendent Dr. Derrick Hutsell, and donors Rita and Royce Fugate. Back: School Foundation president Matt James, board member Valerie Bailey, board member Becky Cash, board member Dr. Laurie Clarkston, and high school counselor Sharon Petrus.

The Willow Springs School Foundation hosted its first meeting on Monday, April 25th and celebrated an exciting start.  The School Foundation, thanks to Royce and Rita Fugate, can count the Margaret Eidson Fugate Class of 1931 Scholarship Fund as their first endowed scholarship created to support graduating seniors of Willow Springs High School.

The Fugate family decided to establish an endowment fund in honor or Royce Fugate’s mother, Margaret Eidson Fugate, who was a Willow Springs High School graduate in 1931.

“We wanted to honor my mother on the 80^th anniversary of her high school graduation,” Mr. Fugate said.

Preference for this scholarship will be given to an elementary or secondary education major with secondary preference to an engineering major.  The 2011 recipient, who will be selected in the coming weeks, will receive the first $500 scholarship.

The Willow Springs School Foundation will provide donors like the Fugate family with a unique opportunity to establish endowed scholarship funds.  However, this is certainly not the only way to support Willow Springs students through the School Foundation.  Donors may help the school reach financial goals in any project or area of interest by making gifts to the school foundation’s short term and long term endowment funds.

“This gives us an opportunity to help donors have ways to give in what interests them,” School Superintendent Dr. Derrick Hutsell said.  “We have this great opportunity, which we can expand upon.”

“It is wonderful the Fugates will allow us to show the importance of giving by example, and we are thankful for their meaningful gift,” CFO staff member Carol Silvey said. “The Willow Springs School Foundation will do whatever they can to improve the Willow Springs school, and the Willow Springs Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of the Ozarks are excited to partner with them.”

Laverta Arnhart Jones was honored by her son Bill Jones with a scholarship in her name.

The new $1.4 million Laverta Arnhart Jones Scholarship Fund will offer five $5,000 renewable scholarships this year and will benefit generations of students to come, thanks to the generosity of Lawrence County native Bill Jones who named the fund in his mother’s honor.

These scholarships administered by the Community Foundation of the Ozarks are open to students at any Lawrence County High School, as well as students with GED or home-schooling equivalencies, who meet academic and financial eligibility criteria. More information is available on the CFO website at www.cfozarks.org/scholarships<http://www.cfozarks.org/scholarships> or by contacting high school counselors.

The Jones Scholarship Fund was established in a bequest by Mr. Jones, who was 79 when he died in December 2009, through the Aurora Area Community Foundation, an affiliate of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks.

Mr. Jones came from a family of tenant sharecroppers who eventually inherited other family property  between Aurora and Marionville. He graduated from Marionville High School in 1945 and received his bachelor’s degree from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, family members said.

He spent his career in St. Louis, where he worked as a federal bank examiner and civilian computer programmer for the U.S. Army. He also spent so many years volunteering at Barnes Jewish Hospital that he eventually joined the computer staff. Never married, he retired back to his family’s homestead in the late 1980s where he kept cows and devoted a lot of time to his passion for genealogy, said his nephew Jim Jones, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colo., and serves as trustee for his uncle’s estate. Jim Jones said his late father, James Jones, Sr., was his uncle’s closest confidant after he returned to Aurora.

“Uncle Bill was a diligent saver and incredibly frugal,” Jim Jones said, describing him as a very private person whom no one would have predicted to leave such a sizeable estate or knew he had designated half of it for the scholarship fund.

Jim Jones said his uncle amassed most of his wealth by purchasing a U.S. Savings Bond with each paycheck. He never invested in the stock market; he put other savings into certificates of deposit and money-market accounts.

“There was a strong work ethic, strong character, and strong values built into all of the kids,” Jim Jones said. “You could see his mentality coming out of the depression after all the stock market failures. He lived most of his life in the aftermath of the depression. As people were encouraged after the war, he started buying U.S. Savings Bonds and he just never stopped.”

The Jones Scholarship Fund is among a record 233 named scholarships being offered through the Community Foundation in 2011 for students across southern Missouri, thanks to the generosity of many donors. This year’s scholarship awards and renewals are valued at nearly $760,000, up from about $600,000 in 2010.

“The Jones Scholarship is an outstanding example of what targeted planned giving can mean to our rural students,” CFO President Brian Fogle said. “We must all do everything we can to promote planned giving through our school foundations and rural affiliate community foundations.  This kind of work is an essential economic development tool in rural places.”

If you would like for Community Foundation of the Ozarks staff members to come to your town or school and discuss developing a planned giving program, please contact Julie Leeth (417-864-6199) or Carol Silvey (417-234-3362).