May 30, 2025

St. Joseph High School Commencement
May 30, 2025

Good evening, I first want to thank St, Joseph High School for affording me the opportunity to award the Dr. and Mrs. Barney Osborne Memorial Scholarship at commencement this evening. It is an honor and a privilege for me to be here.  This is the inaugural year of the Dr. and Mrs. Barney Osborne Memorial Scholarship here at St. Joseph.  The scholarship is a one-time amount of $3,000 provided to the school that our winner will be attending. 

The scholarship was founded based on two important beliefs.  First, my family wanted to give back something to the community of Ironton and to both Ironton High School where my dad graduated and St. Joseph High School where both my mother and sister graduated.  Our family ties to St. Joseph are deep.  Both my mother and sister graduated from here, I received my first Holy Communion and Confirmation here, and my sister was married in this very church back in 1973.    I have been away from the area for over 35 years now and with all the Osborne family moved away from the area, I was losing contact with my roots. A scholarship to a graduating senior at St. Joseph High School was an appropriate way for me to keep in touch with St. Joseph.

But secondly, and far more importantly, the idea of this scholarship really came about as a lasting and endearing tribute to my mother and father. It seems hard to believe but my dad passed away 40 years ago, after 30 years as a doctor and a surgeon serving the people of Ironton and Lawrence County.  

As time passes, fewer and fewer Ironton residents remember my mom and dad and with Lawrence County General Hospital closing around the turn of the century, the mark that my dad made on the community is slowing fading.  This scholarship serves to bring back his memory and is my tribute to his importance to this community.

A lot has changed since my dad’s passing. In my dad’s time a visit to the doctor’s office cost $6, house calls were commonplace, and doctors had time to listen and counsel their patients about anything that was troubling them. Now medicine is a business with corporations and partnerships and specialists and the like. The house call is almost extinct. The field of medicine is probably better now than it was then, but it has changed.

But one thing that has not changed is a quality education. If there is one core belief that my father instilled in our family, it was the need for a quality education. It is something that can never be taken away from you. If my dad were speaking to you tonight, he would tell you that, although you are graduating from high school this evening, you are just beginning your education process in whatever walk of life you choose. Don’t cheat yourself from the opportunity of learning. It will last a lifetime.

My dad and mom loved Ironton and was a great supporter of the town and to St. Joseph.  They lived in Ironton almost all their lives, growing up here with my dad coming back here in the late 1950’s to open a medical practice, first downtown and then on 6th and Pine Streets. It is the combination of my dad’s love of education and his love of Ironton that made me realize that the most lasting tribute I could give my mother, and father was the Dr. and Mrs. Barney Osborne Memorial Scholarship for a graduating senior here tonight.

To all of those who applied for the scholarship this first year, let me commend you. All the applicants were outstanding candidates worthy of winning this scholarship. Our Board of Directors of the Scholarship and St. Joseph High School administration had a difficult time selecting our winner. The first winner of this scholarship will always be an important person to both my family and me, and we will be hoping for much success to our winner.

Our winner this evening has all the excellent characteristics that our Scholarship Board was seeking: high academic standing, active community involvement and a significant list of extracurricular activities. So, it gives me great pleasure in announcing the winner of the first Dr. and Mrs. Barney Osborne Memorial Scholarship presented at St. Joseph High School – MacKenzie Wilds.

– Dave Osborne