Tag Archive for: Longview High School

Stonewater Scholarship Awarded To 10 High School Seniors

For the third straight year, the Stonewater Roofing Scholarship is helping high school seniors inch closer toward achieving their dreams. This time, a total of 10 graduating students from DFW to Arkansas each received $1,000 prizes. This is the most number of students that Stonewater has ever awarded in a single year.

It’s time to meet the 2023 Stonewater Roofing Scholarship winners!

Arianna Medina

Arianna Medina: Arianna is a senior at Georgetown High School and the first winner from the Central Texas area. She plans to study psychology at UT San Antonio in the fall. Having volunteered at child advocacy centers and seeing the mental struggles that some kids face, she strives to help children get through the difficult times in their lives. Arianna also leads an organization called The Locker which helps provide school supplies to young students, much like Stonewater’s own #ClearTheList initiative.

Carson Wallace

Carson Wallace: Carson attends Spring Hill High School in Longview and wants to pursue a career in education. He is an avid reader and lifelong learner, but he struggles with ADHD. He is thankful for the teachers in his life who recognized his difficulties early on and helped him overcome them. Carson now wants to follow in their footsteps and inspire future students to become the very best version of themselves.

Cooper Madden

Cooper Madden: Cooper is the first homeschooled student to win the Stonewater Roofing Scholarship, and he plans to attend LeTourneau University in Longview this fall. Cooper’s family has always had an interest in business, and this Carthage student is no different. In fact, he told his story to Stonewater from the perspective of a roofing salesman, knocking on doors and asking to check the roof for scholarship opportunities. Very clever, Cooper!

Dylan Rose

Dylan Rose: Dylan is the first student outside of Texas to be awarded a Stonewater Roofing Scholarship. He attends Ashdown High School in Arkansas, and he will be going to UT Austin later this year to study computational engineering. His love for nature brought him to a love for math and science. He wants to develop new methods of clean, renewable energy, all in an effort to help protect the environment that he loves so dearly.

Hailey Pitman

Hailey Pitman: Hailey is a senior at Longview High School and will be heading to Kilgore College this fall to study kinesiology. She has been an athlete and dancer throughout her early years, but often struggled with injuries that kept her sidelined. She now wants to help other athletes prevent such injuries, or continue past them. Her greatest dream is to one day be an athletic trainer for the Dallas Cowboys.

Ivy Brackeen

Ivy Brackeen: Ivy will be attending Southwestern University in Georgetown after graduating from Lindale High School. While she appreciates art in all forms — and even made her own a Stonewater Roofing painting — her ultimate goal is to become a stop motion animator. On top of that, Ivy is also studying ASL and doing work within the deaf community to help them gain a greater appreciation of the visual arts.

Juliana Cueva

Juliana Cueva: Juliana has big goals after she graduates from Palestine High School. First, she’s going to Oklahoma State to get a medical degree in dermatology. Then, she wants to return to Palestine and open the town’s first dermatology practice. She also wants to take her skills beyond borders, volunteering in places where medical care is not readily available. Juliana had alopecia as a child, and just wants to help others to feel confident in their own skin.

Maliyah Ransom

Maliyah Ransom: This senior from Trinity High School in Euless suffers from Crohn’s disease, and spent much of her younger years in and out of hospitals. That inspired Maliyah to pursue architecture at Prairie View A&M in hopes of designing children’s hospitals. She wants to make medical care less frightening and more fun for kids. In her free time, Maliyah appreciates artwork. She loves to paint and design her own clothing.

Savannah Solis

Savannah Solis: Savannah’s been an exemplary student at Chapel Hill High School in Tyler, and has a long list of achievements that make her stand out from the crowd. However, the one thing that few other kids can say is that she wrote a children’s book at just 15 years old. (You can order it on Amazon!) Savannah respects police officers and their families, and has dedicated her life to thanking law enforcement for their service. She will be studying criminal justice at UT Tyler in the fall.

Tyler Galbraith

Tyler Galbraith: Tyler has a deep appreciation for the sky, both meteorology and astronomy. Much like a roof, he thinks that it is taken for granted, and only acknowledged during severe storms. That is why, after graduating from Tyler Legacy High School, he will be attending Texas A&M Corpus Christi to study atmospheric science. Tyler wants to continue learning about the sky, the weather, and anything else going on above our heads.

Seniors were asked to submit short videos outlining their plans after graduation, the inspiration for choosing that path, and what the scholarship would mean to them and their family. This year, Stonewater Roofing expanded the contest area into new markets including Texarkana and Austin. Dozens of students shared their stories.

“We were thrilled to be able to open up this scholarship opportunity to more students in more areas,” added Stonewater Roofing COO and co-owner Jacob Law. “We awarded prizes to kids in Georgetown and Arkansas, and even our first homeschooler. It’s the most students we’ve ever awarded at one time, and we hope to continue expanding even further in the future.”

Stonewater Roofing is very active in the communities that we call home, and encouraging students and educators is particularly special for our team. In addition the annual scholarship, the company runs a #ClearTheList contest each year to help teachers get the supplies that they need for their classrooms.

“There are so many ways that we could give back to the community. We hear from organizations every day,” Law continued. “And while we wish we could help everyone, we really strive to invest in the future, invest in some really bright students, and invest in the resources that help educate them.”

Stonewater Roofing is thankful to GAF, ABC Supply, and the other partners who helped make this year’s scholarship possible. We would also like to thank the schools and educators who shared the Stonewater Roofing Scholarship information with their senior class. And, of course, a huge thank you to the students who took the time to submit videos. We love hearing your stories, and it is such a pleasure to meet so many inspiring young individuals.

#ClearTheList Returns To Help Teachers From Longview To DFW

The new school year has arrived, but Stonewater Roofing first helped nine lucky teachers get the supplies they needed for their classrooms. It was part of the East Texas company’s annual #ClearTheList campaign, a push to assist underpaid educators by fulfilling their Amazon wishlists.

This was Stonewater Roofing’s third year helping out teachers. It was also the company’s largest school supply drop ever, hand-delivering books, games, pens, stickers and much more. Instructors ranged from elementary to high school and stretched from the DFW area to Longview. Winners were chosen randomly, and this year just so happened to include two ladies from Owens Elementary School in Tyler.

  • Bonnie Carney, Holiday Heights Elementary School in North Richland Hills
  • Regina Cooper Ahn, Bridgemark Center For Learning in Tyler
  • Nicole Dickerson, Stanton-Smith Elementary School in Whitehouse
  • Tracy Dingler, Bullard Elementary School in Bullard
  • Sarah Galland, Velma Penny Elementary School in Lindale
  • Stephanie Pearce, Pine Tree Primary School in Longview
  • Amy Touchstone, Longview High School in Longview
  • Risa Wasik, Owens Elementary School in Tyler
  • Kayla Whiddon, Owens Elementary School in Tyler

The #ClearTheList movement started as a social media phenomenon. School districts simply cannot afford to buy all of the supplies needed for their classrooms. So, many educators started relying on the kindness of online strangers, posting their wishlists and sharing the registries on social media with the #ClearTheList hashtag. The campaign soon turned into a viral sensation.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“I’ve already spent a lot of money on my classroom, and there’s always more things to buy,” explained Dickerson as she learned that her list would be cleared. “There’s some things on there that we use every single day, like the paper and the markers, the things that get used up and we have to constantly buy.”

“I put so much into my classroom,” added Galland. “Not just money, but time and energy and just my whole heart.”

“If you teach with your heart first, more than anything, they’re going to remember that,” stated Touchstone about her Longview high schoolers. She said that many come from impoverished environments, and they deserve to have the same opportunities found elsewhere. “I feel like God put me in this position, at this school, for right now.”

Employees from Stonewater Roofing brought the overstuffed boxes of school supplies to the teachers before the new school year began. “We have come through probably the hardest year of our teaching careers,” said Carney, referencing the challenges that came about due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “This last group of kids made it, and I’m so looking forward to this new group of kids.”

Stonewater Awards Scholarships To 4 East Texas Students

Stonewater Roofing awarded $1,000 college scholarships to four lucky East Texas students this month, as former high schoolers start looking ahead to the future. Teens were encouraged to submit a video explaining their hopeful career path, their inspiration for choosing that path, and what the scholarship would mean to them.

“It’s impressive what kids can do these days,” explained Stonewater Roofing CFO Chris Morris. “Everybody had a great story, so it definitely made it tough for us to choose.” In fact, it was so hard to narrow down the field that the company reached out to its partners for help.

The initial plan was to only offer two scholarships, one for the Tyler area and one for the Longview area. However, after watching videos from so many amazing kids, Morris said, “It was clear that two wasn’t going to be enough.” Stonewater Roofing asked the folks at GAF, Infinity Marketing and M. Roberts Digital to pitch in extra cash and help provide scholarships for twice as many of the entrants.

The two winners from Tyler were Jayla Gipson and Christopher Whitmore, while the winners from Longview were Braden Nickel and Lanie Pritchett.

Gipson graduated from Tyler High School and will be attending the University of Texas at Arlington in the fall. She plans to study business and commercial real estate, with the goal of one day being her own boss. However, she is mostly focused on giving back to the community like her grandmother who died from COVID-19 in January. “She was always so hard-working, and she always pushed me to be hard-working as well,” Gipson said.

Some people may already know Whitmore’s name. The former Tyler Legacy High School student was featured in the news for an internship he had at Hood Packaging, where he designed a drainage filtration system. He will be studying civil engineering in the fall at Texas A&M, with hopes of becoming a construction project manager. “It all started out with LEGOs,” he said.

Nickel graduated from Longview High School and is heading out of state to study computer science at Louisiana Tech University in the fall. “I believe that computer science is the future of humanity, and that’s something that I want to be a part of,” he stated in his video. “The only limitation is your imagination.”

Meanwhile, musical theatre has always been Pritchett’s passion, just like her mother before her. She started acting at a young age and never looked back, even winning a Best Actress award at a district competition. “I truly believe,” Pritchett added, “with all of my heart, that music and the arts can change the world and have an impact on other people’s lives.” The Gilmer High School grad will continue to study theatre at East Texas Baptist University in the fall.

“Watching all these videos, people have goals, and compassion, and they’re ready to go to the next level,” said Brennan Eberhart, direct sales supervisor for Stonewater Roofing. “They have a bright idea for the future.”