Students Wrote Aviation-Themed Essays

The Virginia Department of Aviation (DOAV) recently announced the 2008 recipients of the John R. Lillard Virginia Airport Operators Council (VAOC) Scholarship and the Willard G. Plentl, Sr. Scholarship.

Hunter Guilliams, this year’s $3,000 John R. Lillard VAOC Scholarship award winner and a graduate of James River High School in Buchanan, has enrolled in Virginia Tech’s aerospace engineering program. He wrote in his application essay about his longtime fascination with aviation. "Perhaps it was the freedom offered by flying, the boundless feeling of the sky and the sense that one could go anywhere," Guilliams wrote.

Steven Newcomb, this year’s $1,000 the Willard G. Plentl, Sr. Scholarship award winner and a graduate of Lee-Davis High School in Mechanicsville, has enrolled in Averett University’s flight operations program with aspirations of becoming of commercial pilot. "Flying city to city inside the United State or across oceans to foreign countries would bring continuous satisfaction to me," Newcomb wrote in his scholarship application essay.

The John R. Lillard VAOC Scholarship is named in honor of John R. Lillard, an aviation enthusiast and great humanitarian that served in several leadership positions with the Capital Region Airport Commission, Chesterfield County Airport and Eastern Airlines. This scholarship is made possible through the kind and generous support of the members of the VAOC and is awarded to a Virginia high school senior that has maintained at least a 3.75 unweighted grade point average; plans a career in the field of aviation; and must be enrolled or accepted into an aviation related program at an accredited college.

The Willard G. Plentl, Sr. Scholarship is named in honor of Willard G. Plentl, Sr., a military combat pilot veteran and former Director of Aeronautics for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Plentl retired from the Virginia Department of Aviation in 1984 and was elected to the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame that same year. This scholarship is awarded to a Virginia high school senior with at least a 3.5 unweighted grade point average; plans an aviation career in a non-engineering area; and has been accepted into a non-engineering, aviation-related post-secondary education program.

FMI: www.doav.virginia.gov