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A $1,000 boost from a local nonprofit helped Jeannette native Noah Sanders buy books and pay for student housing at college while he works on a degree in business and finance.
A 2024 high school graduate, Sanders is hoping to become an accountant after completing coursework at Defiance College in Ohio.
He’s grateful to Jeannette-based nonprofit His Inspired Messages for the assistance.
“I’m appreciative of what (the nonprofit) did for me,” Sanders said.
Lee and Ethel Hamilton serve as the chief financial officer and founder/president of His Inspired Messages, respectively. They hope to give away $10,000 in scholarships to local students in need in 2025. That would be the most given out in a single year for the small nonprofit.
The Jeannette couple has been making a difference one student at a time since they established His Inspired Messages in 2011. They were looking for an opportunity to give back while memorializing a special person in Parks Township native Ethel Hamilton’s life.
They’ve sifted through dozens of essays from prospective scholarship winners over the years, giving away $34,700 since the nonprofit’s inception. For the Hamiltons, it’s a way to cement their own legacy in the community while honoring Ethel Hamilton’s grandfather.
“It just does my heart good,” she said.
“To see the joy in those people’s eyes when you give them a check for $1,000,” agreed Lee Hamilton, a lifelong Jeannette resident. “We do it because we enjoy doing it.”
The memorial scholarships are named after Ethel Hamilton’s grandfather, Samuel L. Hart, an Alabama native who lived in Parks Township, just outside Vandergrift. He worked as a coal miner and often preached the importance of an education, she said.
“He came from the South, and it was just you could have it here real easy. And he encouraged his children to be educated as well,” she said.
The momentum continued through the generations and the Hamiltons now are pushing it out into the community.
They regularly collaborate with the Jeannette City School District to identify potential recipients of two $1,000 scholarships typically given to high school seniors in the spring. The rest of the scholarships are awarded at the end of the calendar year.
Jeannette Junior-Senior High School principal Vanessa White said any amount of scholarship opens up opportunities for students that might otherwise be unaffordable and reduces the financial burden of education.
“The Hamiltons are very generous for offering this scholarship by giving back,” she said. “Every act of giving, big or small, helps create a better, more equitable post-secondary opportunity.”
The first scholarships were given out in 2012, and the annual number of recipients and amount of funding has increased over the years, said Lee Hamilton. He was an Allstate insurance agent at the former Sears in Westmoreland Mall and later had an office in Jeannette for 15 years.
Now retired, he works part-time as a bookkeeper. Ethel Hamilton worked as a secretary. They have an adult son.
The scholarships are open to high schoolers who are committed to furthering their education, students at a college or a technical school and adults who may need to further their education to help them in the workplace.
The Hamiltons focus on helping Jeannette students, but will go outside the school district if others around the area are in need. In 2023, $6,000 was doled out and $7,000 was awarded in 2024.
“We try to help local as much as we can,” Lee Hamilton said.
His Inspired Messages typically holds a couple fundraisers a year — a Christmas Sing-A-Long in December and an annual golf outing, both held at Greensburg Country Club. This year’s golf outing is slated for July 25.
Renatta Signorini is a TribLive reporter covering breaking news, crime, courts and Jeannette. She has been working at the Trib since 2005. She can be reached at rsignorini@triblive.com.
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