A lifelong passion for learning has given local students help in pursuing their career dreams.
Jane “Juana” Q. Miller, who died in April 2014 at the age of 91, left a number of large donations to community groups, including a $637,000 bequest to the Sequim Education Foundation.
The money will be used as an endowment to generate scholarship money for Sequim youths, foundation president Jodi Olson said.
“It enables us to do so much more,” she said.
All of the foundation’s scholarship funds come from endowments, Olson said, and this one will establish two per year for a minimum of $2,000, renewable up to four years. The scholarship will be good for technical and vocational scholarships as well as four-year colleges and universities, she said.
The scholarships won’t be for a specific field of study, Olson said, giving the foundation board’s scholarship committee more flexibility in distributing funds.
“One of the big issues (other foundation groups have) is when you get these real specific requests, it’s hard to give those scholarships away,” Olson said. “Sometimes these kids don’t know what they want to do in their first year.”
Miller graduated from the Eastman School of Music where she majored in music and had a minor in history. She lived in Spokane, Berkley, Calif., Tucson, Ariz., and Sequim. She was active in the Boys & Girls Club in Sequim and Tucson. According to her obituary, she loved having foreign exchange students through Rotary International.
When she died of natural causes on April 18, 2014, her survivors included her son Roger Miller of California, two grandsons, four great-grandchildren and three adopted families. One of those adopted families included the Lancheros family of Sequim; Victor and Julie Lancheros are both employees of the Sequim School District.
Victor Lancheros acted as representative of Miller’s estate.
“She would love for everyone to get as much education as they could get,” Lancheros said.
“She loved to help the youth in any way,” he said. “She was a very charitable person.”
