Bernard Daly’s Promise: The Enduring Legacy of a Place-based Scholarship

Published in cooperation with the Dr. Daly Project Association

Bernard Daly escaped the Irish Famine and with his family emigrated to America, where he became the town doctor in Lakeview, Oregon, and then a state legislator, Oregon Agricultural College regent, county judge, rancher, and banker. When he died in 1920, his estate, valued at about a million dollars, established a college scholarship for the youth of Lake County. Daly’s scholarship fund would ensure that most of the youth of tiny, remote Lake County could attend college.

Drawing on more than a hundred personal interviews, an extensive web-based survey, and archival materials, this book tells the story of Daly’s life, the scholarship fund, and its impact on the recipients, who went on to remarkable careers and lives. At a time when almost no one went to college, Daly created a college for all possibility in a remote corner of America.

The impact of the Daly Fund, one of America’s oldest continuously operating place-based scholarship, offers unique insights into the benefits of higher education and how it might best be supported - questions that we are struggling with today.