New SRU scholarship honors Marine
SLIPPERY ROCK — A new scholarship at Slippery Rock University will honor a Butler man who was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran killed during a training exercise in 1981.
The Theta Chi Capt. Larry King Memorial Resolute Man Scholarship was announced by the school Friday, in a release that said four students selected to receive financial awards through the scholarship this year would be recognized on Saturday during the halftime ceremony at SRU’s Salute to Military and First Responders football game at Mihalik-Thompson Stadium.
The scholarship is named for King, who along with his childhood friend, Ron Burke, grew up in Butler playing sports and hunting alongside each other.
But after high school their paths diverged, with King enlisting in the Marines and serving two years on deployment in South Korea before returning to Butler and taking a manufacturing job at Pullman-Standard.
Burke, who was a physical education major at SRU at the time, convinced his friend to leave Pullman-Standard and use his GI Bill benefits to enroll at SRU, where the two quickly fell back into being inseparable.
“We did everything together,” said Burke, who graduated from SRU in 1973, two years before King would earn his own degree in geology.
That included becoming members of the school’s Theta Chi fraternity, which this year is running a campaign to increase the chapter’s membership at SRU.
After graduation, Burke and King parted ways again. Burke embarked upon the beginning of a 40-year career as a teacher, while King returned to the Marine Corps and became a pilot.
He was killed in 1981, at the age of 30, along with five other men in a helicopter training exercise in Tustin, Calif., when the CH-46 Sea Knight he was piloting collided with a CH-53 Sea Stallion. Burke called his friend one of the more courageous and faithful men he’s ever known.
“He had courage like you would not believe,” Burke said. “He would follow through no matter what the trouble was. He was there for you, and I tried to do the same for him.”
Burke now chairs the fraternity’s scholarship committee.
This year the scholarship, which honors King’s memory, will give financial awards to four students:
Allison Hoffman, a junior mathematics major from Pittsburgh
Riley Keffer, a senior interdisciplinary students major from Grove City
Emma Martin, a senior music therapy major from South Lebanon, Ohio
Nichole Miller, a sophomore biology major from Slippery Rock.
The awards were based on a competitive process that focused on the students’ academic and vocational plans, their community service and leadership qualities and their ability to overcome adversity.
