Capital High student wins scholarship honoring 1981 alumni classmates

Landon Morrow’s route from Capital High School to Helena College got a major lift when the Capital High School Alumni Class of 1981 Memorial Scholarship named him its 2024 recipient in Helena. The $2,500 award will help pay for his diesel technology training and move him toward his goal of opening his own diesel and auto repair shop.

The scholarship has become a yearly way for the Class of 1981 to keep deceased classmates tied to the school they left behind. It began in 2022 at $1,000, then rose to $2,500 by May 2024, the largest amount yet. Alumni said the increase came from support from businesses, fellow graduates and families of classmates who have died.

Morrow planned to use the money to attend Helena College’s Diesel Technology program. For a student entering a hands-on trade field, the scholarship changes what comes next right away: it helps cover the cost of training that can lead directly to work, experience and, eventually, ownership of a local repair business.

Sarah Vulk-Kelly, a Capital High special education teacher and part of the alumni group, said the scholarship also memorializes classmates who are no longer alive, including Stuart Long, who was also known as Father Stu. The memorial fund was designed to recognize a wide range of life paths, not just academic achievers. The alumni group said its members built careers in education, business, construction, religion, sports, project management and agriculture, and wanted the scholarship criteria broad enough to reflect that variety.

The fund is administered as an endowment through the Montana Community Foundation, with the stated goal of supporting future generations of Capital High graduates in perpetuity. State records list the scholarship organization as an active Montana domestic nonprofit corporation filed March 21, 2022.

For Capital High, the scholarship is more than a ceremony and more than a check. It links one graduating senior’s next step to the memory of classmates from 1981, turning alumni history into direct support for a student preparing for work in Helena’s trades economy.