SU Alumnus Surprises Nursing Student with $10K Scholarship in Wife's Memory

Gary White met his future wife Marilyn when they were in high school. During her senior year, he was at a basketball game where she was selling tickets with her friend. He decided to take a shot and ask her out.

“And the rest, as they say, is history,” Gary said. “Years later, she asked me what I would have done if she said no. I joked I would have just asked her friend instead.”

Gary and Marilyn were a perfect match, however. After she graduated from nursing school, they got married the next week on August 16, 1957. The next year, Gary graduated from then Maryland State Teachers College at Salisbury with the Class of 1958, while Marilyn worked nearby at Peninsula General Hospital. She worked primarily in OBGYN before she went back to college and graduated from Salisbury  with a teaching degree in 1971. They celebrated more than 60 years of marriage together before Marilyn passed away in 2020.

In her memory, Gary wanted to make a special gift. He donated in his wife’s name for a scholarship that would award $10,000 to one student in Salisbury University’s Nursing Program to help pay their tuition for a full year.

“When I was getting our kids ready to go to the pool, Marilyn was getting her nursing uniform on,” Gary said. “She was a good nurse, a good teacher, a good mother and a good wife. I wanted to make a difference for someone like her.”

Victoria Sorrels was chosen by nursing faculty from 67 eligible undergraduate nursing majors demonstrating financial need. Sorrels discovered her love for nursing in high school and worked diligently to be accepted into SU’s Nursing Program. She was raised along with her two siblings by a single mother, who she knew was already struggling to send three kids to college. When she was called to be notified that she would be receiving the scholarship, Gary was present on the phone call to surprise her.

“I was so in shock, I didn’t know what to say,” Sorrels said. “He told me, ‘You don’t have to say anything. Just take it, keep working hard and become a great nurse.’ It’s such a selfless thing to do, to give this much to help a complete stranger. I was so overwhelmed.”

Sorrels was surprised and thankful that her professors saw something in her to feel she was deserving of the scholarship. She plans to put her best foot forward in her classes and take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. She said the scholarship will help not only her, but her mother as well and lift a great weight off of her family.

“I feel like what Mr. White did is so rare,” Sorrels said. “It was such an amazing moment and a complete blessing to me, and he did it out of the kindness of his heart. It’s amazing to think there are people out there like that. I hope I honor his wife well when I become a nurse.”

Gary said he has a great fondness for SU, as the place where both he and his wife got their degrees. Their daughter and grandson also attended SU. Gary likes the beautiful campus, the dedication of the faculty, but most of all the people. He is now in the process of creating a separate endowed scholarship in his wife’s memory, to be named the Marilyn White Scholarship for Nursing.

“Someone once told me a long, long time ago that it is better to give than to receive,” Gary said. “I find that to be so true, especially after this.”

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