Joy, discovery and sorrow have filled my waning days of summer.

One of my most satisfying assignments in working with the Northshore Scholarship Foundation is issuing the checks to recipients and to then learn how enthused the recipients are about starting their college careers. This summer, checks went to a pair of extraordinary twins who are extremely determined about continuing their education, but without “difference-making” scholarship dollars, those dreams would have had to be set aside.

The young women (we’ll name them Jenny and Nikki for this article) are the first to earn a high-school degree in their immediate family. They have had to hold jobs to help keep food on the table for their family of three. Daughters of a single mom who has raised them alone since early childhood, they felt it necessary to hold a meeting among the three of them to choose whether it would be Jenny or Nikki for whom they might be able to find a way to finance college. Mom had been out of work for eight months, and they were also in danger of losing the roof over their heads.

Both Jenny and Nikki were top soccer players in high school. Jenny applied to Bellevue College and sought some tuition help through the school’s soccer program. She really had preferred to go to Central Washington University and pursue a degree to teach math at the high-school level.

Jenny applied for the Woodinville Rotary Club’s new “Make a Difference” scholarship valued at $6,000. When the club set the amount, the $6,000 would have covered a year’s tuition at a state school. Not anymore. Jenny was one of three to receive the scholarship. She was elated, her mother was thrilled and sister Nikki was happy for her. Nikki still wanted to become a computer software engineer and had her eye on Bellevue College’s program in computer science.

Jenny’s first thought after learning of the Rotary grant was to see if the college would let her give her $500 soccer scholarship to Nikki to help Nikki get enrolled. Jenny then decided she would go to Bellevue College her first year in hopes that she could transfer to Central in 2010 to work toward her degree in education. Half her scholarship from Rotary would be available next year and the club has given indication that it will seriously consider renewing Jenny’s award in the years ahead.

There was more good news for Nikki when Rotary found $3,000 for her tuition at Bellevue College and she can now enter school this fall, too. We know the twins are determined to go. Theirs were the first checks to clear the scholarship foundation’s bank account this summer.

Harley is home

Can there be any more sorrowful experience than losing a newborn at birth? It happened in our family just recently. Grandson Harley lives on in spirit, though. I have learned that angels can swim, as well as fly (at least in the minds of us earthlings), as our son informed the family that Harley’s ashes were to be spread in a special spot in the San Juan Islands.

He wrote that Harley “will live on among the whales, seals, kingfishers, eagles, osprey, cormorants, herons, otters and mink that make this point their home. He will have the daily company of the passing ferry boats, the constant ebb and flow of the strong tides and the winds to keep him company.”

John B. Hughes was owner-publisher of the Northshore Citizen from 1961 to 1988 and is active in local nonprofit organizations.