Centerville's Lorelai Guenther, Richmond's Olivia Dudas named 2024 Lilly Scholarship winners

WAYNE COUNTY, Ind. — For many people, a full-ride scholarship to your dream college is almost always that, a dream.

For two Wayne County seniors, Richmond High's Olivia Dudas and Centerville High's Lorelai Guenther, those dreams became reality on Wednesday, Dec. 6, when they were announced as the winners of the 2024 Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship from the Wayne County Foundation.

Both were shocked when they walked into a room at their respective schools to see their families and representatives from the foundation before hearing the news that they were selected as the 56th and 57th winners since the foundation has awarded it since 1998.

"They had to make up a lie for me to stay at the high school because I leave and do Cadet Teaching in the morning," Dudas said. "So I was already suspicious and thought that's kind of weird, but I'll go with it. And then they took me down to the library, and I was just like 'Oh my gosh, that's crazy.'"

She added that she applied to the scholarship after one of her role models, Joseph Lahmann, won the scholarship himself in 2018 while they were at Seton Catholic.

"I thought that was so cool," she said. "I've always known about it and it's a really good scholarship, and I thought I had a chance at it."

Guenther said the moment was also very shocking for her and that she was happy both of her parents were there along with several administration there supporting her.

The scholarship is given each year to two individuals known for their academic achievement, community involvement, character and leadership. The recipients can use the scholarship for any baccalaureate degree at any eligible in-state public or private nonprofit college or university, and it covers full tuition, required fees and a "special allocation of up to $900 per year for required books and equipment for four years.

“We are thrilled to be a part of this scholarship program and ensure students in Wayne County have the opportunity to participate,” Wayne County Foundation Executive Director Rebecca Gilliam said in a press release. “This award removes the financial barrier to higher education and academic success.  All the applicants were excellent, and we are so happy for the two recipients.”

Dudas and Guenther were selected from five finalists selected by the LECSP Nominating Committee based on academic performance, future plans, work experience and extracurricular activities, which the list was then sent to the Independent Colleges of Indiana, the statewide administrator of the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program that approves the final selection, according to the release.

“I was honored to get to talk with each student about their accomplishments and high school experience,” Wayne County Foundation Nonprofit Relationship Manager Kelley Cruse-Nicholson said in the release. “All the applicants were exceptional in their own right and I am so happy for Lorelei and Olivia.”

Future plans for both lie in education

Both Dudas and Guenther said they plan on using their scholarship funding to earn a degree in the education field, Dudas for music at Butler University and Guenther for either social studies or English at Indiana University Bloomington or Butler as well.

For Dudas, a music education didn't come out of the blue, as she said that she has been surrounded by music throughout her life, being taught by her family from a young age.

"My grandma was a piano teacher, and she started teaching me piano when I was six for like a month, but then we had to stop," she said. "...she ended up having a mini stroke and it was just kind of the end of her life there. She went to the hospital, into the nursing home and back and forth, and she passed away."

Dudas added that her grandmother was "a really fine musician, a great teacher and grandma" who also played organ, piano in church, sang, and possibly even played string bass in the high school orchestra, though she said she wasn't sure about the last one.

"She's kind of been like...I do it for her sort of thing," she said.

In Guenther's case, she would like to teach between fifth grade and high school, preferably high school, and decided to pursue her secondary education degree in either social studies or English because of her time at Centerville.

"For both of those subjects, I had two teachers that really inspired me last year and the year before when had both of them, Mr. Lickfelt and Dr. Groff."

Like Dudas, however, Guenther also has a family connection to why she wants to pursue her chosen career, as her sister Morgan is a fourth-grade teacher at Centerville-Abington Elementary.

"She's five years older than me so we're not the closest in age, but just growing up, I always saw her as a role model and wanted to be like her," she said. "Maybe when I was younger, it was more like I wanted to be as good at Mario Kart as her, but now I want to be as passionate about my career as she is about hers. Seeing her go through the teaching program when she was in college, it was really cool to see how much she fell in love with teaching."

Creative minds sometimes think alike

One of the standout categories for both Dudas and Guenther were their extracurricular activities, as both are heavily involved in the arts.

With Dudas' pursuit of a degree and career in music, it's understandable how much and how often she can be found on a stage or in a spotlight.

In addition to having played piano since she was nine years old and recently for the Richmond High School choir, she also has played French horn since sixth grade, trumpet, and mellophone, the latter for the school's marching band of which she is a captain for and had a solo for this past season.

Dudas is also involved in Cadet Teaching, a course that gives students an understanding of the teaching profession through hands-on experience, of which she teaches music for at Hibbard Intermediate School and is currently teaching a student how to play flute while learning herself.

At Centerville, Guenther is the woodwind section leader of her band and said it has been a great experience meeting a lot of the new kids that are coming up through the program, adding that it's given her an opportunity to meet them, learn more about them and become friends with them.

She's also been heavily involved with the school's drama club and theater programs, ever since the program has grown from its "non-existent" status before she entered the high school.

"They were doing maybe one play a year and it wasn't a very big production because we didn't really have a lot of money in the department," she said. "But my freshman year, my junior high drama club teacher took up the program and she was able to help us get money for the program. We were able to do a really big musical and were able to do Beauty and the Beast this fall, and that was really cool being a part of the pit orchestra."

Outside of the artistic world, both have also been involved with their schools' Business Professionals of America chapters, with Guenther a part of the parliamentary procedure team at Centerville and Dudas going to nationals her freshman and sophomore years in fundamental desktop publishing.

Both are also officers for their respective classes, Dudas as student body president for Richmond's Class of 2024 and Guenther as treasurer for Centerville's Class of 2024.

Helping the community one tree, card or book at a time

The community service criteria fit both of them as well, as Dudas and Guenther have each been involved in their respective communities.

One of Guenther's favorite hobbies when she's not busy with school is reading, and at one point thought about attending college to be a librarian before deciding on teaching instead.

"I volunteer at our community library, and I've been doing that for I think three years now," she said. "All of the employees at the library, they're all so nice and very supportive. I love going in there because I can learn different skills that I wouldn't otherwise and I'm always happy to do anything for them because the library gave me so much when I was younger."

Guenther's favorite genre is mystery and her favorite author is Jennifer Lynn Barnes, who has written "The Naturals," "The Inheritance Games" and "The Hawthorne Legacy" series, being introduced to her through the former.

For Dudas, her community involvement started in 2016 when at the age of 10, she formed two charities called "The Traveling Bag of Kindness" and "The Lovebugs."

"The Traveling Bag of Kindness", before the pandemic, featured dishwasher-sized bags that were placed throughout the community where residents could put new or used clothes, hygienic products, children's toys or other needed items and pass it to the next person.

The bags were then distributed to A Better Way for Genesis, JACY House, Riley Hospital for Children and Communities in Schools, Wayne County.

It lasted for four years until 2020 when Dudas had to get creative due to health concerns, creating a website called travelingbagofkindness.com with different wishlists from people to which others ordered the items online for them.

"The Lovebugs" is a Valentine's Day initiative that begins the day after Christmas and lasts through Feb. 14 where she accepts cards from everyone across the world from Texas, Wisconsin and Japan to give to nursing home and assisted living residents in Wayne County, of which they are approximately 1,700 according to her.

That too changed slightly after the pandemic, where instead of giving the cards to the residents directly, she gives them to staff members at the facilities who then distribute them. Store-bought cards are also distributed to Riley Children's Hospital.

Dudas and Guenther were selected out of 68 total applicants this year and from five finalists, the other three being Richmond's Hannah Cravens, Sammy Humphrey and Allison Stout.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Centerville and Richmond Seniors named 2024 Lilly Endowment Scholarship Winners