Margery McNary

A $250,000 scholarship fund for Seaside High School students will soon be available through the Rotary Club and Foundation of Seaside as part of a legacy left by a beloved local teacher.

Margery McNary died in 2023, but her passion for education lived on through the people she taught throughout her life, both in and outside of the classroom.

Les McNary, her husband, wanted to channel the love and devotion she showed into future opportunities for students, resulting in the Margery Blair McNary Scholarship Fund.

Throughout their life together, he said his wife always turned down other jobs in favor of teaching, a treasured career she continued until 2002, when she retired from Clatsop Community College.

“And by God, that’s what she did,” McNary said. “And I know, because when she came home every night, and I would have dinner ready, what would she do? As soon as she had finished dinner, she’d be correcting papers every night, getting that job done.

“Students would take the time to call her to thank her for the opportunity to have her as a teacher. She was good people. I thanked her many times for just being my wife.”

A frequent discussion the two of them had before her passing was the lack of scholarships for students who didn’t excel academically or athletically. McNary kept that in mind when he went to go see his attorney and financial adviser about the possibility of a scholarship fund.

“We’d talked about the unfairness, sometimes, that happens to kids,” he said. “And then, the lightbulb went on in my head to say, ‘Margery, I’m going to do something in your name, God bless.’”

Julia Radditz, the president of the Rotary Club and chair of the club’s scholarship committee, said McNary wanted the scholarship to go to students who may not receive other scholarships, and those looking to attend or currently attending community colleges and trade schools.

“Because she (Margery) was a high school and community college teacher, she felt very strongly about supporting, sort of, the underdog, for lack of a better term, and really just believed in the power of education and how that can transform lives,” she said.

Last year, the club’s scholarship committee distributed scholarship funds to 10 different students from Seaside High School. A bulk of the funds are raised by the Rotary Club, but others come from people in the community who want their money to go to scholarships with specific criteria.

“For example, we’ve got a scholarship we support, or manage, I should say, for music students specifically,” Radditz said. “We also just got a new scholarship, July 1 of this year, established by a local physician who wanted a science based scholarship.

“We also have post-freshman scholarships for people who have already gone through their freshman year of college. But basically, our role is to manage the funds and make sure that we are ensuring future opportunities for Seaside High School students for years to come.”

Radditz said Seaside High School would be opening applications for the Margery Blair McNary Scholarship Fund around March, and recipients would be designated at the end of May.

“Education is freedom,” she said. “And we want to provide access and opportunities for local students.”