Truman Heartland Community Foundation invites students from Carroll and Ray Counties to apply for the Mary K. Axtell Trust Scholarship for the 2025-2026 school year. The due date for applications is February 14, 2025. The application can be found here: https://www.thcf.org/scholarships/mary-k-axtell-trust-scholarship. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Mary K. Axtell Trust Scholarship awarded 32 students a total of $160,000. 

The Mary K. Axtell Trust Scholarship provides up to $5,000 per academic year for graduating high school seniors or past graduates from public high schools serving residents of Carroll and Ray Counties and can be renewed for up to three additional years. Applicants must be pursuing an undergraduate degree at an accredited junior college, college, or university or a certification from an accredited technical school. Preference may be given to students pursuing agriculture-related degrees. 

Students can apply now using Truman Heartland’s general scholarship application. The general scholarship application is a two-step process: students complete a standard application with details about themselves and their educational aspirations, and then the scholarship portal matches them to all the scholarships for which they are eligible and directs them to complete the specific requirements for each scholarship. 

For the Axtell Scholarship, the specific requirements are transcripts including final grades from the Fall 2024 semester, a 500-word personal essay about the students’ interests, accomplishments, and educational goals, and a letter of recommendation from a supervisor of an activity in which the student participates.

Students renewing their past Axtell Scholarships should complete the general application and indicate that they wish to renew their Axtell Scholarship when prompted. 

Mary Katherine (Bush) Axtell was the daughter of Saline County cattleman and farmer Pike Caleb Bush and Pauline Metod Jones Bush. Early settlers in Missouri, the Bush family had a large stock ranch and farms in Carroll County near Norborne, Missouri, a Wood Heights farm in Ray County and a ranch in Jeff Davis County, Texas near Valentine. Mary, the second of three children, inherited parcels of the family farms when her parents passed away.

Mary passed away in 1960, and when the Bush family farms were sold, Blue Ridge Bank and Trust Co., the administrators of the Axtell Trust, established a scholarship fund with Truman Heartland Community Foundation in 2019. As instructed in Mary’s charitable will and testamentary trust, the scholarship will provide perpetual support for students of Ray and Carroll County. 

Phil Hanson, Truman Heartland’s President and CEO, said, “We are honored to carry on Mary Axtell’s legacy and offer students in Ray and Carroll County the opportunity to continue their education.”  

In 2024, Truman Heartland awarded more than $828,000 in 461 scholarship awards to nearly 340 local students. More than 250 scholarships are currently available for students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, and technical degrees. Visit https://www.thcf.org/Scholarships to learn more and begin the application process. For questions or assistance with scholarships, please contact Rachael Cassiday Watkins at watkins@thcf.org or 816-912-4185.