The Big Island Press Club awarded scholarships totaling $3,000 to three students this year. The press club annually awards scholarships to students pursuing a higher education in journalism or a related field.
The recipients are:
• Lichen Forster, of Mountain View, was awarded the $1,000 Bill Arballo Scholarship. A sophomore geology major at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, Forster is editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Ka Kalahea, and plans to be a science journalist. This is Forster’s second award.
Bill Arballo was a founding a member of Big Island Press Club in 1967 and its first president. A former United Press International reporter, he is honored through a scholarship funded by an annual donation of $1,000 from Bill’s daughter, Teresa Barth, and her husband, Bill. Arballo died in 2016.
• Lehia Coloma, of Kurtistown, received the $1,000 Hugh Clark Scholarship. A 2022 graduate of Kamehameha High School – Hawaii Campus, Coloma is a freshman at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix.
Hugh Clark was called a “newspaperman’s newspaperman.” He wrote about crime, politics, sports and volcanic eruptions for the Honolulu Advertiser and the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. He was a charter member of the Big Island Press Club. Clark died in 2015.
• Briana Harmon, of Waimea, received the Robert Miller/Yukino Fukabori Scholarship of $1,000. Harmon graduated from Hawaii Preparatory Academy this year and is a freshman at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.
Robert Miller was a UPI reporter whose 1968 speech to BIPC inspired Ouida Hill, wife of state Sen. W.H. “Doc” Hill, to donate $1,000 to start the Miller Scholarship. Miller died in 2004.
Noteworthy for reporting “hard news” for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald as early as the 1930s when women reporters were generally on the society page, Fukabori, who later taught news writing at Hilo High School, funded a scholarship in 1993. She died in 1995.
The BIPC Scholarship committee for 2022 is: Michael Phillips, meteorologist and BIPC treasurer; Royelen Boykie, self-employed social media consultant and BIPC board member; and John Burnett, police and courts reporter for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, BIPC president and three-time BIPC scholarship recipient.