It took a year to set up.
Northwood’s charitable foundation already managed scholarship funds for nursing students. With Howard Brandt’s help, I established a new endowed fund within it, seeded with $100,000 of my own money from my first performance bonus.
It’s called the Richard Dunn Scholarship. It’s for students in the medical records and nursing programs at Rhodes State College in Lima and Owens Community College in Toledo whose families are going through a medical crisis. It pays full tuition and a monthly living stipend, so that no nineteen-year-old ever has to choose between her education and her dying father.
The first donation recorded in the fund’s ledger, before my $100,000, is listed as $50.00, from Paula Dunn.
My mother added $5,000 from her own savings. Kelsey and Grant added $25,000. Uncle Ray sent a check for $500 with a note that said only, “For Richard.” Marissa, my cousin the nurse, organized a fundraising run in Cleveland that brought in $8,200. Grandma Ruth, over my objections, called Mr. Halvorsen and named the scholarship fund as a beneficiary of $20,000 in her trust.
“It’s my money,” she told me. “I’ll leave it where I please.”
The first award ceremony was held in April in a gymnasium at Rhodes State, with two hundred people in folding chairs.
My mother sat in the front row in a navy dress and her good pearls, between my grandmother and my sister. When I stood at the podium and said, “This is for my father, who taught me to keep going, and for my mother, who raised me,” she wept openly into her handkerchief.
Nobody looked away.
The first recipient was a nineteen-year-old girl named Aaliyah Brooks. Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall, and Aaliyah had been about to drop out of the nursing program to take a full-time job at a warehouse. When I handed her the certificate, she held onto my hand and wouldn’t let go.
“I was going to quit,” she whispered. “I’d already filled out the withdrawal form.”
“Tear it up,” I said.
She laughed through her tears. “I already did.”
Afterward, in the parking lot, my mother took my arm.
“That girl,” she said. “That was you.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I’m glad somebody stopped her.” Her voice shook. “I wish somebody had stopped me.”
Mom and I have lunch now on the second Saturday of every month at a diner in Maumee. It was stiff and awkward at first. We sat in a booth by the window with two cups of tea, and she’d ask in a careful voice, “How’s work?”
“Busy.”
“What are you working on?”
And I’d tell her. She listened with her hands wrapped around her cup. She asked questions, real ones, and waited for the answers.
Last month, she asked me to explain what a chief operating officer actually does. It took forty minutes. She took notes on a napkin.
Laura Bennett writes about complicated family dynamics, difficult conversations, and the quiet moments that change everything. Her stories focus on real-life tensions — inheritance disputes, strained marriages, loyalty tests — and the strength people find when they finally speak up. She believes the smallest decisions often carry the biggest consequences.