Katharine Horner

Katharine Horner of Durham is making gifts to endow two scholarships at Vance-Granville Community College, and in the process, she is honoring her family heritage. Ms. Horner, who is originally from Henderson and has worked as a nurse at Duke Hospital for over 17 years, recently committed to make gifts totaling $55,000. Interest earned on the gifts will provide for two scholarships. One, the George Wilson and Pattie Alston Macon/Katharine M. Horner Presidential Scholar award, will be awarded to any full-time VGCC student from the college’s four-county service area with demonstrated financial need. The other, the Guy Thomas and Lelle Courtney Horner/Guy T. Horner Presidential Scholar award, will be awarded to a full-time student with financial need who had been a youth at the Masonic Home for Children in Oxford. The Horners lived in Oxford.Guy and Lelle Horner were her grandparents and Guy T. Horner, Jr. was her father. “Education has always been important in my family,” Ms. Horner said. Members of her family, including her great-grandfather, William D. Horner, were involved in leading Horner College, formerly Henderson Male Academy, in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Horner College stood at the corner of College Street & Chavasse Avenue in Henderson, near where Ms. Horner grew up. “Education is the ticket to a better future,” Ms. Horner said.George and Pattie Macon of Epsom were Ms. Horner’s maternal grandparents, and Katharine Macon (“Kappa”) Horner, their daughter, was her mother. Kappa Horner passed away in January 2006. She was well known in Henderson, especially for her chocolate pies, her daughter recalled. Ms. Horner said that she also wanted to pay tribute to the Macons, who emphasized the value of hard work. She noted that her siblings were also honored by the names of the scholarships, because their given names are represented in the names of their forebears.“I’m excited to be involved with Vance-Granville, and I’m anxious to see who the first winner of this scholarship will be,” Ms. Horner said. “I look forward to the payoff — seeing the impact of these scholarships on the students five and ten years down the line.”VGCC President Randy Parker thanked Ms. Horner for her generosity and noted that more than 75 percent of the college’s students receive some sort of financial aid or scholarship. The VGCC Endowment Fund, one of the largest endowments among North Carolina’s community colleges, awarded 293 endowed scholarships to deserving students in 2006-2007. Twelve of those were the college’s most prestigious scholarships, known as Presidential Scholar awards. With Ms. Horner’s gifts, that number will rise to at least 14 in 2007.