News Releases
9/29/06
Graduating high school students of Norton County, Kan., are eligible for a new University of Kansas scholarship established in honor of two longtime Norton residents.
The Bill and Alice Smiley Scholarship will provide scholarships to deserving students who have graduated from Norton County high schools and are accepted to attend KU. Gifts from the family of the late Bill Smiley, former chairman and CEO of First Security Bank in Norton, established the fund.
A Norton native and Norton High School alumnus, Bill Smiley graduated from KU with a degree in business in 1938. He served as a Naval officer in the South Pacific during World War II. A longtime KU supporter, he was a member of the board of directors of the Kansas Alumni Association. He received the Chancellors Award for his outstanding service to the university in 1984, the year he died at age 68.
Alice Stephens, a Little Rock, Arkansas native, married Bill Smiley in 1938. She died in 1980. The couple raised four children, three of whom are KU alumni: Steve Smiley, who died in 2002, earned his undergraduate and law degrees from KU; Julie Smiley Richardson, who is a Kansas State alumna; Chuck Smiley, who received his undergraduate, MBA and law degrees from KU; and Jean Smiley Ketter, who earned her master’s degree in English literature and her doctorate in English education from KU.
In 1984, shortly before Bill Smiley’s death, he married life-long friend Dorothy Harris Garrett. A resident of Scottsdale, Ariz., she provided major support for the Smiley scholarship in his honor.
The Smiley scholarship will be managed by KU Endowment, an independent, non-profit serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management organization for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.
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