Herbert Steves, a 1945 OU graduate and WWII veteran, left farming for a career as a petroleum engineer whose work took him around the globe, but he and wife Charlene had a heart for rural Oklahoma. “Mom and Dad wanted to help rural students go to college, as they had so many opportunities from getting an education,” said daughter Karen Fletcher. The couple established an endowed scholarship and gave more than $50,000 to the OU Foundation, including a recent $24,000 estate gift. The scholarship also honors Charlene’s father, Charles, a 1909 OU graduate and captain of the OU Sooners football team. Charles Armstrong taught high school English to Ernest Hemingway and coached the University of North Dakota football team, Fletcher said.

Students like those working in OU’s Stephenson Research Center are being helped by University of Oklahoma George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus Kenneth M. Nicholas, who recalls what it meant to receive summer internships. Nicholas and his wife, Sacra, established research fellowships for OU undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a research fund started with a $40,000 Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society. Since then, they have given more than $108,000 to the three funds. “For me, it’s about passing on the financial support that was important when I was an undergraduate and graduate student,” he said.

The late Leon Zelby’s life was the stuff of novels. A Polish survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Zelby fled from the Nazis, was discovered and nearly executed before emigrating to the United States. He was drafted into the U.S. Army briefly, then went on to college and discovered a gift for electrical engineering. From 1967 to 1995, Zelby was one of the most respected professors in the University of Oklahoma’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, all while balancing loves of classical music, literature, travel and ballroom dancing. “He was a Renaissance man,” said his wife of 63 years, Rachel Zelby, who established the Dr. Leon Zelby Electrical Engineering Graduate Fellowship Fund for promising researchers with a recent $25,000 gift. “I like to think he would be pleased.”

Helen Ford Sanger Wallace started her journalism career as an Oklahoma City teen correspondent and spent six decades writing about local people and personalities, primarily for The Oklahoman’s long-running “Parties, Etc.” column. When Wallace retired this past year, it was only fitting that the University of Oklahoma 1962 alum was surprised with a party and the announcement that 200 friends and admirers had given more than $90,000 through gifts as small as $25 to establish a scholarship in her name at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The rotunda of Gaylord College, which serves as a student social space, also was named in her recognition. “It was overwhelming,” said Wallace. “I was honored and humbled.”