Williston now has a memorial fund to honor the legacy of Elise Ollmann-Kahle.
The Elise Ollmann-Kahle Class of 2025 Memorial Fund was announced today, December 18, 2024, during class assembly.
The senior class of 2025 announced that their class gift to be beginning the fund in honor of a late member of their class Elise Ollmann-Kahle, who passed away on October 13, 2024. The goal of the fund is to raise $50,000 in order to be able to start a scholarship in her name.
Elise “really wanted to be remembered and anything we can do towards that would be honoring that wish,” said Natania Hume, Head of the Art Department and Elise’s advisor.
Kathryn Hill and her husband, Robert Hill, the Head of School, were the ones who proposed to me the idea of starting a scholarship in Elise’s name.
“I would love to have a scholarship in her name,” Mrs. Hill said. “But that is going to require raising money.” She added, “she loved learning so much, I would love to see her name live on as someone’s learning.”
Mrs. Hill taught Elise in math and worked with Elise on last year’s Why Not Speak Day workshop: “You Know Two People Who Have Had Brain Tumors.”
After talking to Mrs. Hill, I began to take the lead on the Elise Memorial Fund. Elise is an important part of the class of 2025. I wanted to have our senior class gift be something meaningful, I wanted to honor Elise’s legacy and her love for learning.
Isabel Baxter-Paris, the Student Body President, was more than willing to join me in my efforts. We scheduled meetings with Eric Yates, Williston’s Chief Advancement Officer, and got the idea approved.
Yates explained that, simply put, every year the fund will produce $2,500 for a scholarship from the $50,000 investment.
Getting a scholarship started is called an endowed fund, which must be at least $50,000 to start. The Williston Advancement Office usually has a cap of five years to raise the funds needed to start a scholarship. The reason the benchmark is 50k is because that means every year, 5%, or $2,500, will be produced due to the investment of the 50k. That $2,500 can then go towards a future student’s financial aid package.
A key concern of this effort is how to be transparent with our goal and use of money because the truth is we may not reach our goal; in that case Isabel, the Advancement Office, and I all agree that we will discuss with the community on how the funds will be used to directly honor Elise’s legacy in another way.
Yates mentioned the struggle with group funding is that it relies on bigger donors.
“Group fundraising efforts are always challenging because if you say a 100 people all give a certain amount of money it doesn’t necessarily add up to 50,000,” he said. “The challenge is finding donors who can give more.”
However, this does not mean that smaller donations don’t matter, because they do. Not just donating but talking to people within the community is helpful. Parents of the senior class, parents of underclassmen, underclassmen, alumni, faculty, any member of the Williston community can donate and those many donations, varying in size could make this the biggest class gift in Williston’s history.
This fund gives the Williston community the opportunity to let Elise’s legacy push other students towards their future. We may not be able to raise the necessary funds for the scholarship, but it is worth the try.
Hume described Elise as “such a sweet person, but underneath she had a steely core.” Hume went on to say, “she was very determined, she put a lot of pressure on herself to get good grades, she worked really hard. She was not a wimp.”
Vivian Walker, a senior and one of Elise’s close friends, said Elise was, “the sweetest and most genuine person I’ve ever met. I think everyone that knew her immediately saw that she was the type of person who would always be there for you and always had something kind to say.”
Vivian will always remember fondly getting ready for prom with Elise last year.
“We spent the whole day laughing and getting excited and teasing our moms for being overly enthusiastic,” she said.
Elise was an amazing and diligent student. Mrs. Hill “would teach a thousand [like] Elise Ollmann-Kahle. What is not easy about teaching a kid like that? Super nice, super hardworking, super diligent, doesn’t have that much trouble picking up the material.”
Elise was a pop of color on campus with, as Hume puts it, “cute little hair ribbons that were pink and her different little outfits.”
Hume said Elise was always there to help.
A passionate student and artist, Elise “would hang out in the art room and do her homework because it is a nice quiet place when there are no classes in there,” Hume said.
Hume recounts how, “I would come down to put away art supplies and she would always say, ‘Ms. Hume do you want some help with that?’ and I would always say, ‘no, honey, you do your thing, and I’ll do my teacher thing.’” Hume laughed as she retold the story. “But she just couldn’t and so five minutes later, ‘are you sure you don’t want help with something?’ and then ten minutes later, ‘you sure?’”
Hume said that Elise “was mid-step. She was walking towards her future, and it got taken away.”
To donate to the Elise Ollmann-Kahle Memorial Fund you can click on this link https://giving.williston.com/ and specify that your donation is for the Elise Memorial Fund, in memory of Elise, and/or the class of 2025 gift.
