Sharen and Mila Kohute Memorial Scholarship Fund

Do you know someone that's changed your life? Someone you'll never forget? Someone who motivated you? Or helped you? Our family has many, and Sharen and Mila Kohute are at the top of the list. Even though they are no longer with us, their impact on us remains. We want their names to remain as well. So we started this fund to then create a scholarship. In their name. In their honor. About Mila Kohute: Mila was our first child. After she was born, we began seeing life like never before. We started planning our family's future. We started dreaming about her future and how we could enable it. Unfortunately, we lost Mila when she was seven months old. We often think about the "whats?". What would Mila look like today? Her personality? What about her trademark giggle? And what would she become when she grew up? Those are questions that we will never be able to answer. We can't watch as her dreams come true. We can't watch her fall and get back up. Mila had unlimited - but unrealized - potential. About Sharen Kohute: Sharen (aka "Penn State Grammy") never had it easy. As a child, she grew up in rural poverty. As an adult, a single mom who worked multiple jobs for minimum wage. But, Sharen never gave up when hard times came (and they often did). She always kept grinding. She always found a way. She taught us that work is hard. But, she also taught us to work hard. Sharen spent the last part of her life battling cancer. First, she beat breast cancer. Ten years later, colorectal cancer. She beat that too – at first. But it came back. Aggressively. In the end, Penn State Grammy's body was not strong enough for another round of chemotherapy. Her cancer spread so quickly and aggressively that it left us far less time with her than we had expected. To honor these two women, a scholarship will be created to help a young female first-generation student.

With this scholarship fund, we hope to continue Sharen and Mila Kohute’s memory by helping low-income students with their college expenses. We will start by awarding a scholarship to one student each year. If we can raise enough for this fund, we will award scholarships to even more students.