ZELIENOPLE — The Zelienople Volunteer Fire Department will honor three young men who died in a vehicle accident in January with a Butler County Community College endowment scholarship fund.

The goal is to fund three scholarships in the names of Elijah Lunsford, Sam Bucci and Trevor Barkley, who drowned when the Ford Explorer they were in slid off an icy dirt road in Jackson Township and into the frozen Zelienople-Harmony Sportsmen Club Lake.

The scholarships would be awarded to Seneca Valley High School graduates planning to attend BC3 in the 2011-12 school year.

Zelienople Fire Chief Rob Reeb said the department was looking into what it could do to honor the three young men as the department and the community felt a loss with their deaths.

Upon seeing that BC3 alumni Ray Steffler had decided to provide a donation for a one-time scholarship this school year at BC3, the Zelienople department contacted the college about setting up a scholarship fund in the names of each one of the young men.

Steffler, chairman of the BC3 board of trustees, donated $500 for a one-time scholarship for a 2010 Seneca Valley graduate who enrolls at the college this fall.

Steffler had said at least two of the young men had trained at the college's fire safety school. Bucci and Barkley were firefighters with the Zelienople fire department, and Lunsford planned to sign up as well.

"The thing that struck me is these young kids, they had it figured out," Steffler said at the announcement of the scholarship. "They gave back to the community where they lived. So I figured I would make the sacrifice and put up $500 in their memory."

Community donors plus BC3 employees and staff also donated to the fund, raising it to $1,500.

Three $500 scholarships were awarded Monday at Seneca's annual Senior Awards Night. The recipients are Spencer Mathew, Morgan Baker and Sara Davis.

Drew Mathew, the department's former fire chief and a borough councilman, said the department looked at several options of honoring the three teens including some type of memorial plaque, but concluded that in 10 or 20 years, the meaning would probably be forgotten.

With the scholarship, future Seneca Valley students would be reminded on a yearly basis to honor the young lives of the teens with ties to the department, he said.

The fundraising effort is under way with the department doing its own donations before making its public appeal to raise enough to fund one of the three scholarships for next school year. The department hopes to have all three scholarships funded soon.

Mathew said the Kountry Kitchen restaurant on South Main Street has a collection jar for the scholarship fund that already has brought in $700 in the past few weeks, and it will remain as a donation site until the department's goal is reached.

Michelle Jamieson, associate director of the BC3 Education Foundation, said the fire department is conducting a community campaign to raise at least $15,000 and the department will match up to $15,000 of its own funds.

She said it takes $10,000 to endow a scholarship that will be given annually forever. Although the amount of the scholarship depends on the financial market and the funds earned from the initial endowment, Jamieson said a typical annual scholarship would be about $500.

The fire department's scholarship honoring the three boys will begin with one scholarship in the 2011-12 school year, with the hope of endowing the other two within a year.

"I'm hoping the community steps up and helps," Jamieson said. "It (the endowment scholarship) becomes a living tribute to the boys."