Foundation Stories
Houtz-Meyers-Rose American Legion Post 867 Scholarship Fund
“We’ve been collecting this money for a long time,” says Mark Milliron, member of the American Legion Post 867 in Pleasant Gap. “Ten or 12 years, at least.” The initial contributions for the Legion fund were typically made in increments of $25, and the idea was to use the money for scholarships.
“Over the last decade or so we pulled together about $20,000. In addition to putting this money aside we’ve been funding three scholarships. One is the Spring Township Excellence Award, and the Bellefonte School District chooses a student for that $100 scholarship. We also have the Ruth Crumlish Memorial Scholarship, which is another $100.” Ms, Crumlish was a business teacher and this scholarship, established by her son, is exclusively for a business student. “Then there’s the Spring Township Excellence Award—a $1,000 scholarship—and that is open to any Bellefonte School District student or any child of a member of the Pleasant Gap American Legion Post. So a child, or a grandchild, can apply for that regardless of what school district they go to.”
Post 867 added an extra $5000 to the fund, bringing the total to $25,000, before making the contribution to the Centre County Community Foundation. “When we endowed this fund we renamed it,” Milliron explains. “It used to be just called our American Legion Post 867 Scholarship Fund, and then we named it after one of our members, Phillip Adams, who was a teacher. He was one of the people who was really instrumental in getting this scholarship going.” The fund is now named after three Pleasant Gap veterans who were casualties in World War II. “We thought that putting the money with the Community Foundation would ensure that it would always be available and used for the purpose for which it was intended, in memory of all the deceased veterans.”
