Indiana Black Expo awards scholarships
Keynote speaker stresses importance of education as path out of poverty
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Indiana Black Expo’s Kokomo Chapter awarded 10 local high school students scholarships at the chapter’s Corporate Luncheon on July 20. The luncheon theme was appropriately titled “Empowering Our Youth” and showcased not only the local scholarship winners, but local community business owners and athletes that have contributed to the Kokomo area.
The 10 IBE Kokomo Chapter Scholarship recipients represented three Howard County schools: Deundra Kirby, Zavion Bellamy, Patrick Hardimon, Keilani Gaillard, Keihera Lang, Annabeth Camron, and Paige Wilson from Kokomo High School; Levi Bradford and Emily Slaughter from Eastern High School; and Jocelyn Smith from Northwestern High School.
The Kokomo chapter also recognized Second Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Reverend Dr. William J. Smith Jr. as well as local businessman Dominique Willams and local long distance running legend Byron Bundrent with 2023 Community Service Awards.
Keynote speaker Tony Mason, President and CEO of the Indianapolis Urban League, shared with the students and the rest of the crowd that his mother had drilled into his family that, “education was the way out of poverty. Nothing else mattered in our house.”
He then shared a story about the importance of prioritization of time in a person’s college years. Mason, who was good at basketball in high school, decided that sports would be his life. In his college freshman year, he tried out as a walk-on at his alma-mater Miami of Ohio but didn’t make it because of his lackluster college academics.
“I had to go to tryouts during my first term’s exams,” Mason lamented. “I flunked three out of five exams.”
Pleading to stay on in any capacity, he was turned down. “The coach said, ‘I have to protect my scholarship athletes first.’ So, I wasn’t his priority,” said Mason.
Mason then admonished the scholarship winners to “Prioritize yourself. Remember why you are there first. It’s to learn and finish.”