Tobie Berry, homeless at 6 years old, spent months living in a tent with her mother, father and two younger siblings.
James Couch overcame the difficulty of losing an aunt and, for a time, bullying.
Berry and Couch are among 105 recipients nationwide and the only two in Arkansas to receive a Horatio Alger National Scholarship of $25,000. The scholarship is one of the nation’s largest college financial aid programs in the country. It assists high school students who have “faced and overcome great obstacles,” according to the Horatio Alger Association website. The scholarships are funded by Horatio Alger Association members who also experienced challenges but ultimately “overcame them to become successful business and civic leaders.”
For Berry, a rising senior at Eureka Springs High School, the hardest question from the scholarship prompts was “How do you define the American dream?” because it “can be interpreted in so many different ways.”
She recalled her mother and father arguing, even witnessing her father become physically abusive toward her mother. He inflicted similar abuse upon Berry and her siblings, she said. Her brother is now 10 years old, and her sister is 12.
Berry said she and her mother did their best to make sure her younger siblings were not subject to the abusive and rage-filled behavior of their father.
“When I was 12 he just up and left,” Berry said of her father. “I haven’t really talked to him in four years or so, and we actually have a protection order against him, so he legally wasn’t able to contact us anyway.”
To obtain the protection order, Berry said her mother went through a lot in the court system and is “pretty strong.”
Now her mom works on a farm, harvesting vegetables and maintaining the land.
While living in a tent, Berry, her mother and her siblings received assistance from neighbors and family friends who donated necessary lumber and equipment to build a house of their own.
“[It was] a makeshift house, and for four years we lived in that house after the tent,” she said. “We didn’t have a toilet or a shower, anything like that … I was in middle school, and I was like, ‘My toilet is a bucket.'”
After many home improvements over the past five years, Berry’s family now has running water, electricity, and a heating and cooling system.
“It’s not necessarily the best house but definitely better than it was,” she said.
Berry isn’t sure where she will attend college, but she said she is just grateful to be able to fund her education with the scholarship.
When she first got the notification, she told her mom, and they immediately hugged and cried together, she said.
“She got us through all those years, and in the courts, how strong she was to be able to get that protection for us,” Berry said of her mother.
Couch, a junior at North Little Rock High School, said his school counselor, Gwen Leger, motivated him to apply.
As president of the student council, part of the Beta Club, Math Honors Society, Key Club, National Honors Society, peer leadership and president of the Little Rock Kappa League, Couch stays busy.
He also placed third in state wrestling and won in regional competition. He works at TJ Maxx.
He explained that the scholarship application prompts included questions about adversity, how he defined the “American dream” and one to describe a lost loved one.
The hardest part of filling out the scholarship prompts was summing up what he went through when his aunt died in 150 words.
“You don’t want to just say what happened; you want to say how it affected you,” he said. “So I had to condense everything I was saying.”
Although he didn’t think he would be chosen, Couch was eventually notified.
“One day I was in the middle of class, and I seen an email, and I was like, ‘What could this possibly be?’ I clicked on it and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and I called my mother, and she didn’t answer the phone, and so I called my counselor, and I was like, ‘Girl, guess what,’ and she started yelling. We had a little moment,” he recalled.
Couch said the email came at just the “right time” because he had been stressed about the end of the school year and tests coming up.
He said he would like to know what made the program choose him, but he figured it was because he was well-spoken and genuine.
“I’ve never dealt with discrimination, but bullies, absolutely,” he said. “Probably up until seventh grade, it was terrible.”
Couch admitted that elementary and middle school were especially hard for him while he was developing alongside peers.
“I was put in so many situations where now I would probably avoid it, but it was terrible,” he said. “Academic-wise it was good; I met a lot of friends, but I also met a lot of people I would probably never talk to again.”
The negative comments Couch received were about his appearance, being student council president and doing things others may not have gotten the chance to do in school.
“A lot of people didn’t really take time to really get to know you. It was like, ‘OK, if my friend doesn’t like you, I don’t like you, even if I don’t know why I don’t like you,'” he explained.
Couch said he’s established who his friends are now, but at the time it was hard to deal with.
“Now I’m really secure in myself and saying, ‘I don’t really care if you like me or not; it’ll be all right,'” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want people to like me … but if you worry about other people all the time, you’ll never get anywhere.”
Couch, who is considering attending college in Washington, D.C., wants to major in biology to become a surgeon.
“I’ve never seen a Black surgeon in my life,” he said. “The only Black surgeon I’ve seen is on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ — that is it. Representation is a very good thing, and it opens the doors for other people to keep going. That’s my biggest reason of wanting to be a surgeon … I know I can do it, and I also want to benefit and motivate other people to do it, so other Black kids like myself can be like, ‘OK, if he can do it, I can do it.’ That’s why I don’t want to be in one spot. I want people all over to see it.”
This content was originally published here.