Manteca Soroptimists’ 60-years-strong tradition continues.

Tonight, the Family City service club will be honoring its latest group of scholarship recipients. Seven graduating students from six high schools in Manteca Unified School District will receive cash awards earmarked for their college education. The presentation will be held at 7 p.m. in the Manteca Senior Center on Cherry Lane. The selected students are from East Union, Manteca High, Sierra High, Lathrop High, Calla High, and New Vision. Several thousand dollars will be given away that evening.

Selection of the annual recipients of the cash awards starts with each high school’s counselors being contacted by the service club asking for nominees. Those recommended are then asked to fill out an application that  are then reviewed by a service club’s scholarship committee. Along with the submitted application is a “little blurb” about each student, explained Nancy Davey Myatt who was the first one to receive the Soroptimist scholarship award. She received the scholarship in 1953, and graduated in 1954, who went on to attend San Francisco State University.

Not only was the former Nancy Davey the first to receive the educational assistance from the service club. She was also the only scholarship recipient who ever came back and joined the Manteca Soroptimists. Thus, she has a first-hand understanding of how the money plays a significant role in the students’ pursuit of college education.

“That scholarship paid my rent,” which was $50 a month, her tuition fee which was $25 a semester and $25 a year for books, Myatt said.

Myatt went on to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in education. Her profession as a teacher took her to various places in the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, plus stints overseas in China and Japan.