Former Puxico couple unveil scholarship to help hometown students

Puxico, Missouri, High School students can attend college virtually debt free, thanks to a new scholarship funded by a pair of PHS alumni who want to help others from their hometown achieve their higher education goals.

Harold and Hermena Parks Holigan of Dallas said the Holigan Family Scholarship is a way they can "pay back Puxico" for everything the town did for them when they were growing up there in the 1940s and '50s.

The Holigan Family Scholarship is available to PHS graduates who had at least a 2.75 grade-point average and are pursuing an undergraduate degree at Southeast Missouri State University or Three Rivers College. Discussions are also underway between the Holigans and representatives of the University of Missouri-Columbia to expand the scholarship program to include PHS students interested in attending that campus as well.

In addition to covering tuition and other expenses, the Holigan Family Scholarship also supports PHS juniors and seniors who are enrolled in dual-credit courses at Southeast or Three Rivers.

"Hermena and I both grew up extremely poor there, and quite a few people around Puxico helped us," Holigan said in explaining why he and his wife want to fund college educations for Puxico graduates.

He and Hermena graduated from PHS in 1959 and enrolled at Southeast Missouri State College (now Southeast Missouri State University). After two years at Southeast, Harold transferred to the University of Missouri where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. Hermena graduated from Southeast in 1963 with a degree in vocational home economics.

After a successful career with AT&T, Harold started his own business in 1982 called "Just A Math Problem (JAMP) Enterprises LLC. (Harold explained "just a math problem" is his philosophy of approaching opportunities, challenges and business decisions.)

JAMP focuses on the residential real estate market, including operations in manufactured housing, homebuilding, land development, land banking, property management and technology. Over the years, Holigan and his company developed more than 100,000 residential lots, built more than 8,000 homes and established more than 60 manufactured home communities across the United States, including a number of homes in the Cape Girardeau area.

"Looking back, what made the difference in our lives is the fact that we were able to attend college, and we know how hard we had to struggle to make that happen," Holigan said. "Our thought process is there are many, many kids in Puxico today who might not have the opportunity to ever attend college, and we thought it would be one way we could pay back Puxico."

Puxico High School has an enrollment of 201 students, including 46 seniors in the class of 2020.

"The Holigans are fully committed to supporting their hometown of Puxico, and because of their amazing generosity, many Puxico High School graduates who wish to pursue a college degree or take college-credit classes can do so at no cost to their families," Trudy Lee, interim vice president for university advancement and executive director of the Southeast Missouri University Foundation, said in a news release.

At Southeast, Holigan Family Scholarship recipients can be either traditional students entering their freshman year or they can be transfer students from Three Rivers who had previously received the Holigan scholarship. It covers any unmet needs after any other institutional scholarships and grants are applied to cover tuition, fees, books and supplies. Students must be enrolled full-time and maintain a 3.0 GPA in college to remain eligible for Holigan scholarship support.

"We're in the process of setting up an endowment now, and the endowment projection is that with the amount of money we're putting in, the scholarship should last for many, many, many years," Holigan said and scoffed at the idea of having a university building or college named in his honor.

"I'm not interested in name recognition," he said. "What I'm interested in is getting Puxico students to attend college."

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Harold and Hermena Holigan stand on either side of a group of Puxico High School graduates who are attending Southeast Missouri State University this fall with financial assistance provided by the new Holigan Family Scholarship program.