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In it for the Long Haul
Germany exchange trip leads to scholarship 35 years later.
Terry Welch never would have imagined that a trip to Germany during the summer of 1972 would lead to a 35-year relationship with a special family, not to mention the creation of a German scholarship in the College of LAS.
Welch was a junior at Springfield Southeast High School when he was chosen by the American Field Service to spend the summer as an exchange student living with the Suess family in Ludwigshafen, Germany, a city of about 200,000 on the Rhine River.
"It was fantastic," says Welch, who now works as an attorney in Dallas. "The family I lived with was absolutely phenomenal."
In fact, the Suess family had such an impact that Welch continues to see them every few years. He visited the family in Germany just this past summer, and the Suess family has visited the Welches in Dallas.
The Germany connection also inspired Welch and his wife, Mary Claire, to target their giving to LAS through a new, endowed scholarship in German. Welch began giving to LAS back in 1986 with a modest gift that grew steadily over the years. But then a University representative asked the Welches to consider the idea of focusing their support on an area of special interest to them.
From that seed of an idea, the Terrence S. and Mary Claire Welch Endowed Scholarship was born, targeting undergraduate students majoring in German at the U of I.
Another inspiration for the scholarship was the German classes that Welch took at the U of I—classes that left a lasting impression. Welch, a political science major, decided to take the German classes because he did not speak a word of the language when he first went to Germany in 1972—although he was given a crash course the week before leaving.
According to Welch, the most meaningful part of the '72 trip was simply sitting around the living room after dinner and talking for hours on end. He learned about the Suess family history, as well as their experiences during World War II. Ludwigshafen was one of the most heavily bombed German cities during the war, with an estimated 50 percent of all houses destroyed. Mr. and Mrs. Suess, whom Welch describes as his "German parents," were just children at the time.
For Welch, a long-distance runner who logs at least 1,000 miles every year, being committed to a long-term, long-distance relationship with a German family comes only naturally. After all, marathon runners know what it means to be in it for the long haul.
The same long-term commitment applies to the Welches' giving. They decided to initiate the German scholarship and give back to the U of I because, as he says, "It has such a special spot in my heart, and it was a great time of my life."
Terry and Mary Claire Welch aim to help undergraduate students, in particular, either with tuition or an overseas program. The first recipient of the Welch Scholarship, awarded in April of this year, was Martha Erhard, a German and history major who will be traveling to Germany this fall to teach German to high school students.
"I am going to teach students, but I know I am going to learn a lot from them," says Erhard.
In Welch's experience, trips to Germany have a way of doing that.