An anonymous Erie businessman has committed $500,000 to an existing trustee scholarship at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. The gift will be used to support Erie County students enrolled at Penn State Behrend.
“This individual believes in higher education as a proven method of increasing one’s ability to enter professional fields. He wanted to focus on Erie County students in an effort to address the issue of poverty in the region and to help break that cycle,” said Dr. Donald Birx, chancellor of Penn State Behrend. “Seventy percent of our students and their families take out student loans to fund their educations. Scholarship support from generous donors like this is a crucial component to our students’ educational and financial futures,” Birx added. Penn State Behrend has 31 trustee scholarships.
With this additional gift, the trustee scholarship now has the potential to assist up to an additional 25 students per year. It will support academically talented Erie County students who demonstrate significant financial need. In 2010, Penn State Behrend’s trustee scholarship recipients earned an average grade-point average of 3.49. The Trustee Scholarship program is part of an effort by Penn State to secure private support University-wide for undergraduate scholarships. This scholarship program has a unique matching component to maximize these efforts—the University matches up to 5 percent of the income from the gift annually, in perpetuity, effectively doubling the financial impact of the scholarship. To date, Penn State Behrend has secured nearly $24 million of its $32 million goal for the University’s current capital campaign, For the Future: The Campaign for Penn State Students.
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, is a comprehensive residential college offering 34 bachelor’s, six associate, four pre-professional and two graduate degree programs. More than 4,700 students benefit from being part of a major research and land-grant institution on a student-centered campus, enriched by more than 110 clubs and organizations, 21 NCAA varsity teams and 19 intramural sports. Penn State Behrend is named in recognition of a donation by Mary Behrend, widow of Ernst Behrend, who founded the Hammermill Paper Co. in Erie in 1898. The Behrend family lived on the Glenhill Farm, which is the core of Penn State Behrend’s 854-acre campus. For more information, visit behrend.psu.edu.
Happy Sunday to Erie, PA!
It is always a quiet day in Erie Media on Sundays, and that suits me just fine.
It is a day of rest, a day of thanksgiving, a day of the Lord.
But occasionally, a story in the news can actually bring you closer to God, for having read it. Thought I would share it.
Decades ago, Paul Simon wrote a song called “Mother and Child Reunion”, and the song had a reverberating chorus saying:
“And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again”.
The song runs over and over again in your mind, if you have ever heard it.
I was surprised to read Simon revealing the inspiration for the song one time.
It seems he had lunch in NYC at a Chinese restaurant, and on the menu was “Mother and Child Reunion”. He asked what the dish was, and was told it was made of “chicken and eggs”……a mother and child reunion, eh?
“OOOH! I love that! I’ve gotta write a song on that”, said Simon.
And he did.
He wrote and became famous with Art Garfunkle, for the songs in The Graduate, an early Dustin Hoffman motion picture.
“Sounds of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” and many early hits for the duo are in that flick.
I always favored two of their songs myself.
FAMOUS: “The Boxer”…..where a cycle of persistence is acknowledged.
LITTLE KNOWN: “April Come She Will”….in which a full cycle is consumed in 6 months.
The duo split and Paul Simon recorded on his own. His first solo album came out almost 40 years ago, in February, 1972, and the 2nd song on that album was “Duncan”. This song is so old now that Watergate break-in had yet to occur for another 4 months. Nixon was President.
When Simon sings now, most in the audience were not even born when the song came out on his first solo.
But last Saturday, if you drove only 4 hours from Erie, PA, you could have heard Paul Simon in Concert in Toronto. Had you done so, you would have witnessed a “Mother and Child” type reu-nion, as the course of a lifetime runs over and over again.
Simon performed. It was a few moments between songs when a woman yelled out “Play Duncan”. She let it be known that she took up guitar and that was the first song she learned.
Simon stopped everything, and waved her on stage, over and over again…he waved her up! The woman, Rayna Ford, was in disbelief, but eventually came up to her idol. She traveled from Newfoundland to see Paul Simon, and the song Duncan is started in that locale of Canada.
Lincoln Duncan left Newfoundland,… as the song starts.
Paul Simon took Rayna at her word and gave her HIS guitar and asked her to sing the song for the audience. It was as if God Himself was waving at YOU, at the Gate of Heaven to come on in. Most people would melt; Rayna strapped the guitar on and began to sing the song, Simon standing nearby smiling in memory, and soon the whole band joining in with the enthusiastic crowd, hearing one of their own.
The final stanza of Duncan says:
Oh, oh, what a night
Oh, what a garden of delight
Even now that sweet memory lingers
I was playing my guitar
Lying underneath the stars
Just thanking the Lord
For my fingers,
For my fingers
You can read the story in the following link, and hear Rayna too, and when you are done, though the stars are no longer twinkling in the sunshine,….thank the Lord for your fingers this day, and the ability to find yourself keystroking to this story from last Saturday in Toronto.
The course of a lifetime runs…..still; and it is a delight to share ours with Paul Simon.
Enjoy, Erie!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2011/05/14/136305513/paul-simon-and-a-moment-of-pure-sobbing-joy?ps=cprs
Quite a comment.