“These scholarships will provide a financial boost to Aroostook and Washington county students as they head off to college,” Maine Community Foundation President CEO Steve Rowe stated in a press release announcing the gift bequeathed by Sally Stetson Tongren.
The scholarships will be established in her name, with the inaugural awards expected to be made to high school graduates in 2017.
“We are honored to be able to help fulfill Sally Tongren’s legacy,” Rowe stated.
According to an obituary published in the Bangor Daily News shortly after her death at the age of 88 on Oct. 21, 2014, Tongren attended Houlton schools, graduated from Oak Grove Academy in Vassalboro and received a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
She married Hale N. Tongren in Houlton on Dec. 29, 1947, and traveled the world with her Navy husband before the couple settled in Virginia, where she worked for the Navy Relief Society and later volunteered as a docent for the National Zoo.
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, according to the obituary, she wrote several books about animals, including subjects such as feeding animals at the zoo and how animals reproduce.
Tongren was the daughter of Albert K. and Hazel Hewes Stetson. Her father was the owner and publisher of the Aroostook Pioneer, the first weekly newspaper in The County, according to the Maine Community Foundation.
Sally and Hale Tongren moved in 2005 to Maine. The obituary for Sally Tongren indicated she was survived by one son, Eric Tongren of Brunswick. Efforts to contact him on Friday were unsuccessful.
Leigh Cummings, a Houlton historian, said Friday that he did a genealogical search but could not find a connection to any family member remaining in the local area.
A statewide organization with offices in Ellsworth and Portland, the Maine Community Foundation partners with donors and educators to provide Maine students access to educational opportunities. Maine Community Foundation manages more than 500 scholarship funds.
For more information about the foundation and its scholarships, visit www.mainecf.org.
