Student Wins Don Choate Memorial Scholarship

Pictured (L to R) are Jesse Joyce from Middle Tennessee Lumber, scholarship recipient Derrick Osborne, Brooke Choate and Vonda Choate.

Good things can grow out of bad things, and Middle Tennessee Lumber is proving it.

After Maintenance Supervisor Don Choate died in 2010, Middle Tennessee Lumber established a scholarship in his memory at the Tennessee Technology Center at Dickson. The scholarship is designed to cover a year of tuition for an Industrial Maintenance Student at either the Dickson or Clarksville campuses.

Members of the Choate family and Jesse Joyce, representing Middle Tennessee Lumber, were on hand Dec. 14 for the presentation of the first scholarship.

Recipient Derrick Osborne, a Guthrie, Ky., resident and an Industrial Maintenance student at the center’s Clarksville campus, was effusive in his thanks to the Choate family and Middle Tennessee Lumber. Choate’s widow, Vonda Choate, said her husband possessed a deep faith in God and would have been proud to meet Osborne, himself an associate minister at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church.