TAL-MOAA NEWSLETTER ARTICLE
August 3, 2009
Ladies and Gentlemen of TAL-MOAA, on July 22nd, we had a fabulous evening at our annual Bobby Bowden/Scholarship Foundation Awards dinner. Many of you took the time to meet with our awardees and their parents, and I’m sure you were as impressed by them as were all of us on the Scholarship Selection Board. This particular evening is just so special; it’s always a treat to listen to Coach Bowden reminisce, joke, and share football insights. It is also heart lifting to meet our scholarship winners and learn a bit about them and share their dreams for the future.
You may remember Coach Bowden saying that football is not the prime mover in his life. When asked how important winning is to him, he remarked that the top four things in his life are God, family, education, and then football. Not that it matters, but I think the Coach has it just about right. We may differ on number four, but I certainly wouldn’t disagree with numbers one, two, and three.
It’s number three, education that I want to talk about for a minute. Friends, as a nation, we are slipping. If you spend just a few minutes on Google or Yahoo, you will see just how bad it is. Here are some headlines from a quick spin around the Internet:
“U.S. slipping in education rankings”
“U.S. students rank 11th in Science, 9th in math”
“The U.S. now ranks 18th in education among the world’s industrial nations.”
“..the U.S. ranks 20th among all nations, in the proportion of 24 year olds who earn degrees in natural science or engineering.”
I said we were “slipping,” but perhaps I should have said, “We’ve fallen.” But I’m ever the optimist and I believe we CAN get up. It is up to all of us working together to focus on education as the essential ingredient of competitiveness and success. Each of you is doing your part by participating in this scholarship program. And you saw the results the other evening. You saw the talent and the potential of the young men and women that received our scholarships.
Although our level of education, especially in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math, has fallen in the last 10-15 years, our scholarship winners surely remind us that there are a lot of good, hard-working young men and women on their way up. With our scholarship awards, TAL-MOAA is doing its part to elevate the level of education in our part of the world.
TAL-MOAA 2009 SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS
This year, we had six applicants from four of our area high school JROTC Units. The first place winner was Cadet Gregory Cummings from Lincoln High School and the two cadets who tied for second place were Cadet Rebecca Stewart and Cadet Julian Egler, both from Wakulla High School.
CADET GREGORY CUMMINS
$1,500
Gregory Cummins is currently a member of the Class of 2013 at Annapolis. Of all the applications we have seen over the years, Cadet Cummins was probably the most articulate, complete, and professional. It’s easy to see why he has been a leader and trail blazer throughout high school.
After holding numerous leadership positions in his NJORTC Unit (Commander Unarmed Basic Drill Team, Color Guard, Sailing Team, Leadership Academy, Military Order of the Purple Heart National Leadership Award, etc.) Cadet Cummins was selected as Company Commander at the beginning of his junior year. Additionally, he was very active in church activities, worked a part-time job, and graduated in the top 10% of his graduating class – 31 out of a class of 394, with a weighted GPA of 4.37.
Greg has aspirations of attending Navy flight training in Pensacola, Florida in hopes of becoming a helicopter pilot. My guess is that he will achieve all that he strives for.
CADET JULIAN EGLER
$1,000
Cadet Egler has done it all. He was a standout in NJROTC, in academics (highest GPA in his NJROTC Unit), and in extracurricular activities. He was a graduate of the Navy’s Leadership Academy, the honor platoon commander his junior year and the Company Commander his senior year. He was vice president of the National Honor Society, a delegate to Boy’s State, and served on the Wakulla High School Honor Court. Additionally, he managed to contribute 230 hours of his free time to various community service projects.
Cadet Egler worked two jobs after school and on weekends, and played in the church choir every Sunday evening. He sang and played guitar in a band that recorded two singles in Nashville and contributed its time to community festivals and fundraisers.
On top of this impressive record, Cadet Egler obtained a weighted GPA of 4.8 and graduated sixth in a class of 251. He will be attending Florida State University on a NJROTC scholarship and will study aeronautical engineering to prepare himself to be a naval officer.
CADET REBECCA STEWART 
$1,000
Cadet Stewart is on her way to FSU where she has earned an NROTC scholarship. She intends to study information technology and become an Information Warfare Officer upon graduation.
Rebecca has been very active in numerous activities at Wakulla High School. She was the Unit Executive Officer and Commander of the Unarmed Basic Drill Team. She was the School’s sole representative to Girl’s State last summer, and she served as the School’s Class Treasurer both her junior and senior years. She was a role model in church serving as a Sunday school teacher, a member of the choir, and a member of the church’s dance team. She was also very active in community activities, spending more than 140 hours on various community projects such as Habitat for Humanity and the Adopt-A-Road Program. She managed all this while maintaining a weighted GPA of 4.0 and graduating 28th out of a class of 251.
Thank you again for all your help in making our Scholarship Foundation successful. With your help, we have done some terrific things for our local graduates and will continue to do so in the future.
Sincerely, your Scholarship Foundation Board,
RADM H. E. “Rick” Grant, JAGC, USN (Ret)
BGEN Neil Snyder, USA (Ret)
COL Ernie Rezendes, USA (Ret)
LTC Allen Degraw, USA (Ret)
LtCol Walt Cory, USAF (Ret)
Mrs. Doris Pollock