Note: This message was originally sent on February 26, 2019
Colleagues, please give yourself a gift today and be sure to read Isaac’s reflection below… grateful to each of you for what you do to “make opportunities happen” at GU.
Steele-Reese Scholarship
- Established 1993
- 84 unique, individual students awarded
“I served in the US Army for five years, but after being wounded in Afghanistan, I had to find a new career path. I wasn't sure about college because I was a high school dropout, but I gave it a try and earned my associate's degree before transferring to Gonzaga. With my background, college was not an option, but thanks to this scholarship my life was forever changed. I have the opportunity of a lifetime to receive one of the best educations in the country.” –Isaac, 2018-19 recipient of the Steele-Reese Scholarship
Eleanor Steele was born in 1893 and grew up in New York City, where her father, Charles Steele, was a partner of J.P. Morgan. She spent her childhood in a world of affluence and ease, but it was also a rigid world in which young women were not encouraged to pursue professional careers. Eleanor was ambitious and sought the training for a serious musical career. For more than two decades, she performed as an opera singer and recitalist in Europe and the U.S. with her then-husband, Hall Clovis, as the duo Clovis-Steele. After divorcing, she never returned to the East Coast, the wealthy world of her childhood, or to the glamorous world of professional music.
Eleanor met and married Emmet P. Reese in 1941. During the early 1930s, he had left Southern Kentucky for Central Idaho, the most remote and unspoiled area he could find in the continental US. He lived an independent life virtually as a frontiersman for several years, trapping beaver, maintaining a small herd of steers, panning for gold, occasionally working on ranches, or packing materials into the wilderness area for the Forest Service. At the time of their marriage, he and Eleanor bought and operated a small working ranch in a narrow mountain valley near Shoup, Idaho.
Their life for fifteen years at the Shoup ranch was simple and strenuous. Eleanor helped with the manual labor of building the log structures, cooked for the ranch hands, canned most of the fruit and vegetables grown and used on the ranch, and kept the business records on their Hereford bulls. The bull herd quickly became one of the finest in the state, and the Reeses gained their living from the proceeds of their labor.
Eleanor’s inheritance remained intact. It was her duty, she felt, to put it to a permanent good use. She set up The Steele-Reese Foundation in 1955 in honor of their families. We were able to work with the Foundation to set up this scholarship at Gonzaga in 1993 for students from Idaho.