Charger Pride
Who we are, and how we got here
Mainly we are alumni of Tulsa Memorial high school. We are also friends and parents of students who are interested in helping these young people advance their education beyond Memorial. And we are businesses in Tulsa who have employed high school students or simply understand the lasting benefit to our community of helping young graduates to fulfill their potential.
The idea to form an organization to help Memorial students with a scholarship program was hatched at the 40th reunion of Memorial’s Class of 1973, which took place in October 2013. The following May we were chartered in the State of Oklahoma as the Charger Pride Scholarship Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. On September 12, 2014, the IRS notified us that we had been approved as a 501(c)(3) public charity, exempt from federal income tax, and that donors to our Foundation could deduct their contributions on their tax returns.
In the spring of 2015 the Foundation awarded its first round of scholarships to Memorial students, a total of $10,250 designated to the nine seniors who had applied. That entire amount was raised from among members of the Class of ’73. In June 2015 we made presentations to several other classes holding reunions in Tulsa, and as a result received contributions from Memorial alums from classes that had graduated in 1975, 1980, and 1985.
In 2016 the Foundation awarded $15,750 in scholarships to sixteen Memorial seniors for academic year 2016-17, and committed $2,250 for 2017-18 to two other seniors. That total, while it included dollars from the classes noted above, was again almost entirely funded by the Class of 1973.
In 2016, with the launch of this website, we are greatly increasing our efforts to enlist the contributions, ideas, and help of alumni from throughout Memorial’s 50-plus years of history.
