Unless you were born with a silver spoon jammed down your throat, chances are you needed help to reach the position you now hold, whether it be teacher, engineer, doctor, lawyer, pharmacist or even sports editor at the Lake County Record-Bee.
I worked hard to put myself through college and earn a bachelor”s degree, but I received many a helping hand along the way. I wouldn”t have made it without those people who came into my life, some for only a short time, but who nevertheless inspired me to work hard, to keep going when things got tough, to never lose sight of my goals.
One of those was a history teacher at San Francisco State, John Tricamo, who was a guard at the Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War II in Europe.
Other help came in the form of financial aid, which to a struggling college student, is the gift of life. When I graduated from Healdsburg High School back in 1979, I applied for a handful of scholarships and received a few, which helped immensely. One of them was the Tom Phillips Memorial Scholarship, which still lives today even though Tom”s parents, Rena and Major Phillips, are no longer with us.
There”s no reason you should know who Tom Phillips is, however, he is one of more than 58,000 members of the U.S. Military who gave their lives during the Vietnam War. Tom Phillips was a Healdsburg boy serving his country and was nearing the end of his tour “In Country.” As the story was told to me by his parents, he was looking forward to returning home and rebuilding an old car.
He never got the chance.
Tom Phillips died shortly before his return trip home. Tragically, he was killed by “friendly fire,” an artillery round that landed short of its intended target.
Kelseyville High School will soon be offering a scholarship in honor of someone who you may know. You may have been a student in one of her classes or you may have heard her rooting on her two sons during their athletic careers at Kelseyville. You may have talked to her in the grocery store. Maybe you know her for all of those reasons or for any number of others. If you knew her, you were lucky. I never got to meet Tom Phillips.
The Christine Hanson Memorial Scholarship will be a fixture at Kelseyville High Scholarship beginning next year and hopefully for years and years to come.
Christine Hanson lost an 18-month battle with cancer earlier this month. She left behind a husband, Greg, a fixture in the Kelseyville community, and two sons, Brian and Grant. Brian was the Record-Bee”s male athlete of the year a few years back, a three-sport star for the Indians.
Christine spent nearly 20 years as a teacher, primarily at the kindergarten level, in the Kelseyville Unified School District. The recipient of the Christine Hanson Memorial Scholarship will be a student who is pursuing a career in child development, just as Christine did.
“She had an intuitive Ph.D about what”s best for young children,” Greg Hanson said of his wife.
“She was so good with kids,” son Brian added. “One of the hardest things about losing her is that she”ll never get to hold her grandchildren … she would have been a super grandmother.”
While Christine affected many lives and would have been remembered even without the creation of a scholarship in her name, Greg said he thought it was important to honor his wife”s memory with a scholarship.
“She passed away at such an awfully young age (53),” Greg said. “And she was so good with children. She believed that children are our future and what you do for them in the first six or seven years of their lives will make or break them. She loved working with them and this is a chance for her name to live on.”
Christine rarely forgot a face or a name, according to Greg and Brian. “She would run into her former students all the time … she almost always knew their names,” Greg said. “And most of them remembered her, too.”
Greg is donating $10,000 of his own money — seed money — to get the scholarship program going. His hope is that the Kelseyville community will help that amount grow.
“We want the Kelseyville community to know that in the last year of her life, the community support we received was incredible,” Greg said. “People have asked me what they can do to help us and this is it.”
During Christine”s memorial service, which was held at Kelseyville High”s new cafeteria, an overflow crowd of 200-300 attended.
“There was a line out the door,” Brian said. “We had to rig up a sound system so that people outside could hear.”
“It was a fitting tribute to her,” Greg said.
If you would like to make a donation to the scholarship fund, simply drop off a check made out to the Christine Hanson Memorial Scholarship Fund at the Kelseyville High School office, 5480 Main St. in Kelseyville.
It”s a great chance to do something that will help others long after you and I are no longer around. And it”s a great way to honor a great lady.
