Kate Swift Reese Scholarship

To download the Kate Swift Reese Scholarhip application click here.

The Watauga Education Foundation is now accepting applications from college-bound Watauga High School Seniors for the Kate Swift Reese Scholarship.  At $1,000 the scholarship is a noteworthy addition to the funds that are available to local students for post secondary education.

The endowment was established with the Foundation by the surviving children of Asa and Kate Swift Reese, long time Beaver Dam residents. Much admired, Miss Kate, was best known for showing kindness to all she encountered and for being a natural born educator.

“Our mother instilled the importance of education in each of her 10 children and all of those whose lives she touched,” said Clint Reese, who lives in Fuquay Varina, NC, with his wife Maude.  “During the depression, she cooked three meals a day, tended a garden, made clothes for the children, washed their clothes with soap that she made, and canned meat and vegetables that were raised on the farm.  She made certain that everyone attended church on Sunday and she even found time to prepare and teach Sunday School for more than thirty years.”

The Kate Swift Reese Scholarship will be awarded this May, to a WHS student who epitomizes Miss Kate’s spirit of helping others. Applications for the scholarship are available at right, and through guidance counselors Watauga High School.  They must be received by the foundation by March 1st.

Eligible students are those who graduate from WHS, are enrolled in an accredited institution of higher education in the US who demonstrate excellence in academic achievement, citizenship and community involvement and who clearly demonstrate a need for the scholarship.

The Reese family is well known throughout the state of North Carolina and especially in the High Country.  Many of the family members have worked for the Watauga County school system, including former WHS principal and school board president, Andy Reese, who passed away in December, 2010.  Other Reese siblings are Asa L. Reese(deceased), Norman Reese, Kathleen Reese, Richard Reese, Gladys Reese, Betty Reese, Clint Reese, Dorcas R. Hodges, Lance Reese(deceased).

Photo above: The Reese siblings in the summer of 2009, at which time they established the Kate Swift Reese Scholarship. Andy Reese is in the center of the back row.