Clarke County Education Foundation Announces the Bonnie Ann Justice Memorial Scholarship

By Ann St. Clair Lesman

The Clarke County Education Foundation announced a new scholarship in memory of Bonnie Ann Justice (Blackmer). The Bonnie Ann Justice Memorial Scholarship was formed by Archie Justice and the Blackmer Family. The scholarship will provide a $1,000 scholarship to a graduating senior who is a female student at Clarke County High School. The student will be continuing their education at a Virginia public college or university and be an avid reader.

Bonnie grew up in Menlo Park, California, and attended the University of California at Santa Cruz. She lived in Berryville for over 20 years, and was a fierce advocate of early childhood reading. Bonnie managed The Berryville Old Book Shop from 2003 until her health declined in 2015. Bonnie made it her mission to ensure everyone who came through the doors walked out with a wonderful book and a renewed enthusiasm for reading.

Bonnie especially loved making sure the shop was stocked with a wide array of children’s books, and that the children’s room was a fun, welcoming space where kids learned to fall in love with stories. She believed reading should be the focus of early childhood development, and that reading is the key to mastering all other subjects. She was a bright and wickedly clever person, with the innate ability to put smiles on the faces of everyone around her. Bonnie was an amazing asset to Clarke County, and she will be sorely missed.

The Clarke County Education Foundation, established in 1991, is an independent public charity dedicated to promoting, expanding, and augmenting the educational opportunities for students and staff in the Clarke County Public

Schools, by generating private support and involvement to enhance these publicly-maintained services. The CCEF has provided more than $3.2 million in student scholarships, teacher grants, system demonstration grants, and donordefined projects through a combination of fundraising and endowment income since its inception. For information, visit www.ccefinc.org

For information regarding the Bonnie Ann Justice Memorial Scholarship, contact Beth Williams, Clarke County Education Foundation executive director, at 540-955-6103 or ccefinc.berryville@gmail. com. For those interested in donating to this fund, checks may written to Clarke County Education Foundation with Bonnie’s name in the memo line or may be accepted on the CCEF’s website.

Poetry Tick Tock

by Diana Kincannon

There was a time tick tock when summer was a separate world of sundrenched heat and burning sand, cooler by the water where the waves crawled in and out, the tide rising or falling, always one or the other. Sand grit in eyes and ears from riding waves the way my father taught me, head above the water’s white turmoil, the challenge to make it all the way to shore. Or gentle swells lifting me and setting me back down, swells that made the sea seem a friend.

The Dutch ladies’ weekly coffee clique, once young wives come from the old country back when the land was feral to build new lives from flower fields. Coffee carefully poured, yellow cake served on fine china plates, the small silver teaspoons brought out. The lively treble of women’s voices, the delicate click of porcelain, a cup put to saucer.

The thrill of a secret crush, riding in his fire-red Stingray, three of us where there was only room for two, his shoulder tight against mine, a touch so fraught that I could hardly breathe.

Then tick tock came the world upon us like a slow-rising tide, hiding the moment when it turns and ebbs and ever so slowly takes everything away.