Meserve Fund’s Generosity Has Benefited An Entire Family

(The following letter to Karl Epple, chairman of the Albert W. & Helen C. Meserve Memorial Fund, has been received for publication in The Newtown Bee.)

Dear Mr Epple and the Meserve Scholarship Distribution Committee,

Thank you and the Meserve Scholarship Committee for accepting me as a 2008 Meserve Scholarship recipient. I cannot express how much I appreciate the Meserve Foundation for all of the funding that you have provided my family and me over the years. I am sorry that I am missing my last banquet to celebrate the Meserve scholarship and all of its recipients, but I will be finishing up on the West Coast on the day of the banquet.

The Meserve Foundation has been incredibly generous to me and all of my siblings over the years. The scholarship has made many opportunities available that otherwise would not have been financially feasible. We have been able to concentrate on new and interesting environmental experiences, rather than student jobs to make enough money to get through the semester.

I am finishing a fellowship with Oregon State University and the Forest Service in the western Cascades of Oregon. I have been looking at the impact of evapotranspiration (how trees use water) on stream water discharge. It has been a serious learning experience, both about the forest and the research process.

We are all thankful for the Meserve, and each of my siblings wanted me to pass on a special hello to you. Tristan, the first of our family to receive the Meserve Scholarship, has just moved to Brussels, Belgium. She is working with the McKinsey Corporation researching public health issues in developing nations. Joe is finishing his master of soil science at Oregon State University, and is starting his job this fall with the US Forest Service in a National Forest in northern California. Whitney is in the middle of her Environmental Engineering PhD program at the University of New Hampshire. She has just returned from spending a year in Norway studying the impact of oil spills in sea ice.

Congratulations to all of the other 2008 Meserve Scholarship recipients. I feel confident they would have made Albert Wadsworth and Helen Meserve very proud people for their past and future contributions to the environmental and medical fields.

Thank you again,

Quincey Blanchard

8 Plumtrees Road, Newtown                                      August 22, 2008