Time of year

As the education reporter, I have been inundated with over the last week or so with press releases and invitations for end of school year award ceremonies. Strive, Kiwanis, Dollars for Scholars, Agri-business committee, Martin County Youth Foundation, the list goes on and on. What has struck me about this is that when covering some of these ceremonies as my time permits, the people giving these awards often have very little to do with the students getting them. I don't mean they don't care about them - obviously they do. I mean they aren't family members of the recipients, they are not parents of school aged children, they mostly don't even seem to know them very well. They are not personally involved and yet most of the people involved with the groups spend a lot of their personal time and energy organizing the scholarships, raising money, and promoting the opportunity. For people they don't even know. Of course education is important and it helps everyone when our future generation is educated, but the level of commitment I have seen while talking with these people is astounding. It wonder if the students realize what the community is doing for them, even to give them just $500 or $1000 — as Harland Anderson of Dollars for Scholars mentioned — will obviously not make a huge dent in their college debt. I hope they do.