Former Baldwin athletes helping fund scholarship
The Childress-Williams Helping Hand College Scholarship Dinner will be held on Friday in the Baldwin High School cafeteria.
The Scholarship Dinner will be the first of two events to raise funds for a $2,000 scholarship to be awarded to a graduating Baldwin High School senior. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. and the dinner will begin at 6.
Returning home for these events to give back to their community, are Baldwin alumni and former All-State football players Ira Childress and Shawn Williams.
“We see this as being an annual event,” says Childress. “We’ve been able to go to school and do well and we thought it was time to give something back to the community each.”
Childress helped the Ferris State University Bulldogs win the 1999 GLIAC Football Championship and received his bachelor’s degree in Applied Speech Communication and a master’s in education, also from Ferris.
He is now the Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, Planned Giving, & Advancement Services at FSU.
Williams started for four years on the Central Michigan University football team where he finished his career as the fifth all-time leading tackler. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Sports Studies.
While the former Panthers have left Baldwin, both still have friends and family there.
“We were just sitting around one day and we thought this was something we had to do,” Childress says. “We figured the best way to help the youths in the community was to give them some assistance in getting a college education.”
The evening will include a keynote address by former Michigan State basketball All-American, ex-Detroit Piston, and current sports broadcaster, Greg ‘Special K’ Kelser, on the topic of how athletics can help students to reach their educational goals.
There will be an All-Star Benefit Flag Football Game, also at Baldwin High School, following the dinner at approximately 7:30. Proceeds from both events will go to a current Baldwin High senior in the form of a college scholarship to be used during the 2006-2007 academic year.
The recipient will be selected through an application process.
These events and the scholarship they will fund were developed because Lake County is one of the most economically disadvantaged areas in Michigan. Approximately 84 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch in the Baldwin School District while the state average is only 36 percent.
This scholarship will help one of these students to reach his or her educational goals, when that may not have been possible otherwise.
Tickets for the dinner are $25 per person. Tickets for the football game will be $5 for adults and $2 for students.
