Twenty-five years after tragedy struck her family, Upstate Medical University Chapter President Carol Braund finds her smile again every year when a high school student accepts the scholarship named after her late daughter.

Pamela Braund was just five days away from starting college at Penn State, where she planned to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. But that dream and her life ended tragically Aug. 19, 1986, when she was killed in an auto accident.

Though her life was cut short, her name and spirit live on a quarter of a century later in the form of the scholarship that bears her name. The Pamela Braund Memorial Scholarship was first bestowed in 1987, and is awarded annually. The one-time $1,000 scholarship goes to a graduating senior from Fayetteville-Manlius High School—Pam’s alma mater—pursuing a major in education at a four-year college.

Braund proudly attends the annual ceremony at the high school where the scholarship award is presented.

“I have found that meeting the recipient and learning where they are going to school and what area they want to teach helps briefly to fill the huge void in my life that losing a child can create,” she said.

Braund recalls how the accident devastated her family, and had a profound impact on her friends and their families.

“The outpouring of emotional support and financial support was incredible,” Braund said. “As we became aware of the extent of the giving from friends, business acquaintances and professional friends, we talked about how to best use these gifts in a way that would reflect Pam’s great love of people.”

In the months following Pam’s death, Braund said her family and friends talked about the teacher that her daughter aspired to become, and the impact she might have had on public education.

“It became clear that a positive way to acknowledge our huge loss would be to establish a scholarship to be given to someone that might become the teacher that she had wanted to be,” she said.

— Donald Feldstein