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Estate Gift Increases Endowed Scholarship Fund
for Secondary Education Majors

RELEASED: June 30, 2009

EAU CLAIRE — A 101-year-old woman recently left an initial estate gift of $100,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation to further increase an endowed scholarship fund established in memory of her brother, who was a 1934 graduate of UW-Eau Claire.

Thelma Johnson Damgaard, an Osseo native, was 90 when she established the Howard O. Johnson Endowed Scholarship in memory of her brother Howard, a teacher, who graduated from UW-Eau Claire with a bachelor's degree in education.

The scholarship is one of the few UW-Eau Claire scholarships designed for secondary education majors.

Damgaard also was a teacher. She received a bachelor's degree from UW-Madison, a master's degree from the University of Minnesota and a doctorate from Stanford University. She taught music in the public schools for many years, was an assistant superintendent of schools in Colorado and served as a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the University of Northern Colorado.

Damgaard's other brother, Byron Johnson, graduated from UW-Eau Claire in 1940.

-30-

KH/DW

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