Ximena Ochoa received the Delphi Study Club Scholarship at the club’s spring luncheon April 11. Education Committee Chair Linda Brown introduced Ochoa and presented her with a scholarship certificate.Ochoa is a 2023 graduate of Tonkawa High School where she is a member of the National Honor Society, has earned an Academic Letter and has been listed on the Superintendent’s Honor Roll for two years.During her high school career, she participated in vocal music for three semesters, served as basketball team manager three years and has volunteered at Tonkawa Elementary School fall carnivals and at recreational baseball tournaments.The daughter of Gonzalo Ochoa and Gabriela Franco of Tonkawa, she attends the Hispanic Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackwell.She will attend Northern Oklahoma College Tonkawa, working toward an Associate of Science degree in Biological Sciences-Pre Medicine. She plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in pre-medicine at the University of Oklahoma and to work as a registered nurse before pursuing her ultimate career goal to become a licensed anesthesiologist assistant. “Receiving this scholarship will help me reach the goals that I have set for myself from a young age, and I hope that I will be able to make my teachers, parents and myself proud by doing so,” she said.Social Committee members Beverly Frazier, Ann Cales and Doris Osborn served the luncheon to members and guests, Ximena Ochoa and Gabriela Franco, in the Baptist Fellowship Hall. The luncheon table was covered with a pink cloth and featured a centerpiece of three white vases filled with spring flowers.Ann Cales reviewed Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands. Brands tells the panoramic story of the settling of the American West, which both evoked and shattered various individual’s dreams. Using maps to illustrate her talk, Cales concentrated on the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1805, searching for a northern water passage to the Pacific Ocean through the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. President Thomas Jefferson ordered the expedition to collect exhaustive geographical, botanical and anthropological information, which they accomplished, but his dream of using riverways to transport goods and people across the vast territory was shattered by the absence of such a passage.
