Scholarship in Memory of Stephen C Sheppard

Zack Sheppard is organizing this fundraiser.

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Stephen Sheppard passed away on March 2nd, 2024, after a short battle with long-term complications of the treatment that helped him beat cancer nearly 40 years ago. With your help, we would like to give an annual scholarship in his memory to a public school high schooler on their way to becoming a first-generation college student like him. Read on for more about him and why this is how we think he will be best remembered.

Stephen, my father, was a professor at Williams College, where he had taught for 24 years. He was scheduled to retire next year, but you could hardly tell. He was still teaching, and still collaborating on a variety of projects, including a textbook he was co-writing about art and how we value it.

However, there was something he valued more highly than any art or object - education and how its pursuit had changed his life. He and my mom, Kay Oehler, were both first-generation college students. Indeed, they persevered together through loans and side-jobs to achieve not just a four-year degree, but also their doctorates. It took them around the world, including several years living in Europe. His love of education also motivated him as a professor to show up and give extra hours for his students, even after they had graduated. In his own family, it pushed my parents to save so that my sister and I wouldn't have to take on as much debt as they had if we chose to go to college.

That pride in being the first in his family to go to college was the first thing my mom thought of when I asked her what a good way to remember dad would be. With your help, we want to create a $1000 annual scholarship in his memory at Mount Greylock Regional High School, the public high school my sister and I attended. It will be given out by the school each year to a senior who is part of a new generation in their family to be accepted to a four-year college or university.

Any amount you can give will be added to that scholarship, to keep it going for as many years as possible. Thank you.