CANYON – The Paul Blake Legacy Foundation announced Monday that scholarship recipients from Canyon ISD will each receive $1,000 toward funding their education with a focus on trades.
These scholarships were started in honor of Paul Blake, a longtime member of the Canyon community who served on the Canyon School Board of Trustees from 2022 until his death in July of last year. His family started the foundation to help graduating students into trades following high school. Blake owned a roofing and construction company and desired to see more students enter trades like his.
The foundation’s goal is to provide Canyon ISD students with scholarships that can be used for training, books, equipment and tools. Members of the legacy foundation, including community members from the fields of plumbing, electricians, mechanics, banking, financial planning, and other local men and women, will award these scholarships yearly.
Blake’s daughter Wendy Frick spoke about this foundation honoring her dad’s legacy and commitment to students.
“It has been truly humbling to hear the many stories about my dad’s legacy,” she said. “One of the greatest honors of my life was having a front-row seat as he guided his grandkids. It is our family’s hope that the Paul Blake Legacy Foundation will continue to bless students in the trades for many years to come.”
Christy Blake, Paul Blake’s widow, spoke about the foundation’s awarding of scholarships and the importance of carrying on her husband’s legacy with this foundation.
“Paul always liked to focus on the kids in the trades because he was a local contractor here,” she said. “He had a roofing and construction business here and always was interested in the kids going into the trade fields. He felt we were missing a whole group of kids who could go into plumbing, electricians, welding, and mechanics. One of the students honored is going into airplane mechanics.”
Blake said her family worked together on a scholarship fund and quickly realized that a foundation might be able to expand the process more to give back to Canyon ISD students interested in pursuing jobs in the trade fields. With this foundation, she hopes to provide students with yearly scholarships from the district’s high schools.
“Paul would probably be embarrassed that we did something in his honor, but he would be honored that we were able to focus on the kids in the trades,” she said. “The funding for the first year of scholarships was made possible by donations in his honor last summer. In the future, we hope to figure out the best funding avenue, and we are in the last days of setting up our 501C3 for this foundation.”
She said these scholarships are essential to help students pursuing training in trade fields for which the training can be expensive.
“We want to continue to honor God, Paul and the students in Canyon ISD so that his legacy can continue for many years,” Blake said.
The first-year scholarship recipients were:
One other student was awarded a scholarship from Midway High School for plumbing but, until contacted, will not be named.
