By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
The Indiana Chapter of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation will hold its 28th annual Golf Tournament on Sept. 14, 2023, at Pebble Brook Golf Club, 3110 Westfield Road, Noblesville. This will be the first time a scholarship is named for a Noblesville marine: Corporal Donté Whitworth.
The Reporter spoke to Noblesville Police Dept. Sgt. Tyler Mensch, a former marine who is involved in organizing this golf tournament in in Whitworth’s memory.
Mensch
“The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation is a 501(c)(3), it’s a national 501(c)(3) based in Alexandria, Va.,” Mensch told The Reporter. “It was founded in 1962.”
The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation is the nation’s oldest and largest provider of need-based scholarships to military children. For more than 60 years it has provided access to affordable education for the children of Marines and Navy Corpsmen attending post-high school, undergraduate, and career technical education programs.
“I think that one of the coolest things about this is that we are identifying a Hoosier Marine each year, and we create a scholarship that is that Hoosier Marine’s named scholarship,” Mensch said. “For instance, this will be the Corporal Whitworth Memorial Scholarship, and the scholarships are created as an endowment, so they’re perpetual. They’ll last forever. And we enjoy offering to the families this way to keep a Marine’s memory alive forever.”
Corporal Donté Jamal Whitworth, 21, Noblesville, was assigned to Combat Logistics Regiment 15, 1st Marine Logistics Group, Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Ariz. He was born on June 20, 1987, and died on Feb. 28, 2009, in Taqaddum, Iraq, in a non-hostile vehicle accident near Al Taqaddum Air Base, about 50 miles west of Baghdad.
“One interesting part of the recipients is that we dictate that the recipients are all children of Hoosier Marines as well, so all this effort is staying in Indiana to help out Indiana folks,” Mensch said.
If you would like to attend the golf tournament to support this scholarship in Corporal Donté Jamal Whitworth’s name, or if you would like to become a sponsor of the tournament, you can do so online at mcsf.org/event/indiana-golf-tournament.
