King’s is proud to announce a new scholarship available to incoming Foundation Year Program students.
The Carrie and Ralph Wright Memorial Scholarship at King’s has been established through the generous bequest of alumna Judith Kaye Wright, BA’64, in loving memory of her parents.
It will be first awarded in 2019/20 as a $12,000 award, renewable in upper years for $9,000 each year to students who maintain their academic standing. The scholarship’s potential total value for each student recipient will thus be $39,000.
Judith K. Wright
Wright was born in Sydney, N.S. in 1942 to Ralph and Carrie (Mackley) Wright. She graduated from the University of Toronto as well as King’s, and was a teacher and voracious reader. Wright’s wish was that, upon her death, this gift be used to provide one or more leading undergraduate scholarships, based on academic excellence, for entering and/or in-course full-time students of King’s humanities programs, including the Foundation Year Program. Wright died in Toronto in December 2017 and was interred with her parents at Hardwood Hill Cemetery in Sydney.
Lois Miller, BA(Hons)’65, knew Wright as a fellow resident of Alexandra Hall. “Judith was several years older than I, and further along in the honours English program at King’s-Dal,” Miller says. “I was in awe of her, and some of her fellow honours English students including the late Margaret Page. Judith, Margaret and several others used nicknames based on the characters in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Sometimes they included me in their talks, which I considered learned conversations, and they gave me the name ‘Eeyore’. Not everyone might have liked to be named for Eeyore, a character often gloomy and sarcastic, yet compassionate. But for me, it was like being admitted to a secret society!”
Wright was the ”Pooh” in their group, Miller says. “I saw Judith as a brilliant student, fun-loving and caring. I am not surprised that she chose to endow a scholarship to recognize and encourage academic excellence.”
It is the scholarship Wright would have wanted, says her fellow alumnus, friend and estate executor Elizabeth Bayne Sodero, BA’63. Wright had a passion for learning and was enthusiastic about academic achievement. In high school, she was in the same class as astrophysicist Dr. Arthur MacDonald who in 2015 received the Nobel Prize for physics. “However, when they graduated from Sydney Academy it was Judy who won the Governor General’s Medal for the highest average!” says Sodero.
Wright also won the Governor General’s Medal at King’s in 1964.
“King’s is fortunate that the generosity of our alumni does so much to support our current and incoming students,” says King’s President William Lahey. “Judith Kaye Wright’s legacy will live on through our students who will be enriched by the gift she left King’s in her parents’ name. It’s a gift that spans generations and reminds us all of the enduring value of the humanities.”
