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44 Years of Scholars
Written By: Kevin Rowland | Issue: August 2023
Powered by a generous church and a community’s commitment to education, the Conkle-Rowe Scholarship has enriched the opportunities of worthy young minds.
Pat Rowe surrounded by Scholarship Recipients
In the 44 years since the inception of the Church of the Good Shepherd’s no one thought it would grow to be what it is today.
That includes the 95-year-old co-founder and now chair emeritus, Pat Rowe. The scholarship was started by Henry Conkle in 1979 and reconstituted as the Conkle-Rowe Scholarship after Pat’s twenty-two-year tenure. The scholarship program has helped over 110 scholars realize their two- or four-year college dreams.
This year was very special as Pat celebrated her 95th birthday on June 8, and the scholarship fund turned 44. The Conkle-Rowe Committee and church decided this would be the perfect year to kick off a Founder’s Day Weekend! Over 200 scholars, family guests, donors, and church parishioners celebrated the milestone weekend events in June.
As Pat proclaimed before the festivities, “let’s make sure these celebrations are about the kids, and not about me.”
And so, we did, with just one small candle on the cake for Pat. The Conkle-Rowe Founder’s Day Weekend events were a team effort, and all of the events were self-funded by donors so as not to take away any scholarship money!
Currently, the scholarship fund supports over 30 active scholars from five area high schools attending thirteen different local and regional community colleges and universities. The scholarship’s mission, “Believe In Youth, Invest In Their Future,” was adopted by the church in 2019 as part of the church’s Bazaar Barn and Outreach growth efforts.
