Rotary Club awards ten $2,000 scholarships at annual awards night

On Tuesday, May 23, the Rotary Club of Belleville held its 72nd-annual scholarship program. Ten scholarships of $2,000 each were awarded to Belleville High School graduates.
The club recognized six recipients of first-time scholarships and four recipients of second-year renewal scholarships.
First-year scholarship recipients from the class of 2017 are Kayla Browning, Angie Peralta, Victoria Perez, Jennifer Schmidt, Gavin Schultz, and Sara Stoelton.
Renewal scholarships went to: Jared L. Bellingham, Brandon Bond, Leah Hardy, and Kameron Owen.
Belleville Rotary Club President Mary Jo Suchy offered welcoming remarks and an overview of Rotary’s scope and purpose. Rotarian, Debra Juchartz provided the history of the club scholarship program, outlined the proceedings of the evening, and offered greetings to the numerous local dignitaries in attendance.
Juchartz, the chairwoman of the club’s Scholarship Committee, then introduced the featured speaker, John Douglas Peters, J.D., lawyer, university professor, author or co-author of 12 books, and artist.
Dr. Peters’ presentation, directed primarily at the student awardees, stressed the importance of using their post high school studies and experiences to continue to search and explore opportunities to find the work areas they love.
He tied the success of their efforts to the application of four key attributes he feels are very important: Organization, Discipline, Balance, and Perseverance. Through his talk he provided examples of how those traits helped him through some of his academic development years, but are still vital today.
After Dr. Peter’s engaging, yet challenging, talk, each of the scholarship recipients present spoke briefly about their plans and hopes for the future. Brandon Bond, a renewal student studying overseas, sent a thank you letter, read by his father.
Since the scholarship program’s inception, Belleville Rotary has awarded $490,000 to Belleville High School students.
This year, as in recent years, the primary funding source for the program has been the Charles B. Cozadd Rotary Foundation which assists the club in the funding or partial funding of many of its projects.