Orville D. and Maralee R. Mounce were products of their generation - hard working, blue-collar people who learned the value of education the hard way. Orville left the hills of Kentucky with a fifth-grade education and Maralee dropped out of high school in Illinois, laboring most of their years together in the Village of Manville in Livingston County.

They raised five children in Woodland Unit #5 School District: Janet, Joyce, David, Robert and Donald. Janet was in the first-ever graduating class of Woodland, the first member of the family to ever graduate from high school.

Orville and Maralee knew that earning an education would accomplish their singular goal - to give their children a better life than they had had. Following all of their graduations from Woodland and other colleges, universities and trade schools, the children diversified into service as an accountant/bookkeeper, a mechanic, a nurse, a communicator/educator and a corporate executive.

Because Woodland had been such a central hub for their education and their social life in the rural area, members of the Mounce family established the $400 annual Orville and Maralee Mounce Scholarship Fund. Administered by the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation, the fund will assist future members of the Woodland-area family in also helping to attain their educational goals in honor of Orville and Maralee. The person selected for the scholarship should have economic need, academic excellence, and community leadership.

Illinois Prairie Community Foundation serves as fiscal sponsor of the Orville and Maralee Mounce Scholarship Fund. You may make an online donation to the Orville and Maralee Mounce Scholarship Fund, or get information on making a donation in another manner by clicking here.