Gene Peterson, 1942 Purdue Yearbook

What about those who don’t get the scholarship? It’s a question I’m often asked and as far as I can tell, the answer is that they do quite well. It seems that the scholarship has had an impact on most everyone in the community; on those who get the scholarship and those who don’t.

Consider the example of Gene Peterson (Lakeview H.S., 1936) who watched all seven of his siblings receive the scholarship. Seeing one sibling after another go off to college, it’s not surprising that, as he told me, the Daly Scholarship was always on his mind. When he didn’t get it, he was very disappointed – he was the only one of eight in his family not to get the scholarship. Since he couldn’t go to college and didn’t want to stay on the farm, he got a job as a bookkeeper at the First National Bank of Portland in Lakeview. According to Myrna (Perry) Bell (Lakeview H.S., 1946), whose family lived on the same tract of land in the New Idaho District, Gene was so accurate he was called Perfect Posting Pete. Continue reading