Meagan's Memory Lives on with Scholarship Gift

12/01/2002

Meagan Campbell had grown up in the world of hospitals. She'd volunteered her service at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center where her father Wayne Campbell is CEO.

"She always enjoyed helping others and lending a hand with patients," recalled Campbell after his daughter died in a tragic car crash on Interstate 10 in September while en route home for the weekend from Flagler College where she had just begun her freshman year.

With an unprecedented outpouring of more than $20,000 in memorial gifts from throughout the community and state, Campbell and his wife, Susan, have established the Meagan Campbell Health Technology Scholarship through the OWCC Foundation in memory of their 18-year-old daughter.

"So many people have been so kind, so thoughtful to our family, and we are truly overwhelmed by the generosity," said Campbell of the donations in memory of the popular teen who recently graduated from Niceville High School where she was member of the girl's golf team for four years. "Meagan was a wonderful child. There wasn't a thing she wouldn't do to help someone."

Campbell, who has worked with OWCC staff to implement the new registered nursing and health technology program at the college, said the scholarship endowment in Meagan's memory "will make her part the lives of students who receive the scholarship. Meagan still will be helping others."

Dr. James R. Richburg, OWCC president, said, "Wayne and Susan Campbell are a part of this college in so many ways because of health programs, so we share their loss and sadness. Their decision to remember Meagan with a scholarship touches our college as it has touched this whole community."

Richburg added, " Never in the 15 years of the OWCC Foundation have so many individuals and businesses come forward with such a outpouring of donations. I know the Campbell family will take a measure of comfort that so many friends and colleagues chose to honor Meagan in this way."

According to Richburg, the Meagan Campbell Scholarship will be awarded annually to a student accepted for any of the colleges health technology programs including nursing, dental assisting and eventually the surgical technician program that is scheduled to begin in Fall 2003. He said the first award of the scholarship would be made next summer.