Victoria Fauth Bongard Endowed Scholarship

The endowment fund was established in memory of Michael Koehl ’s great-grandmother, Victoria Fauth Bongard, and will continue to provide financial assistance to selected students. In the early days of the Sam Houston Normal Institute, students were given appointments to study there, and Victoria Fauth was appointed by the Texas State Representative of District 90, W. H Jones, to attend in 1886-88. She always told her great grandson about liking her life in Huntsville, at the institute, among the tall pine trees. After her graduation she was obligated to teach for at least two years. She met her future husband there. Marshall Latimer Bongard was a Canadian mining engineer who had come from Ontario to “make his stake” in the mines, so that he could buy farming land in Texas. Marshall Bongard died in 1924 of a cancer which may have been caused by his exposure to the chemicals used in mining. She rarely spoke of him to her family, as she missed him so very much, and told her great grandson that she had no interest in remarrying, as she “had had the best”. When her children had their own homes, she continued to live in her own, and raised at least one of her grandchildren there. She loved to play games when anyone visited, especially card games, usually under lamp light, as her home did not have electricity until late in her lifetime. She lived to be almost 89, till 19 August 1957, and after her death was buried beside her husband in Oakwood Cemetery, Waco, Texas. The road on which her family lived is still known as “Bongard Road”. Michael Frank and Judy Rowe Koehl both grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and moved to Huntsville when he became the pathologist at Huntsville Memorial Hospital. Both of them had the advantage of growing up in families where education was valued, and both have graduate degrees. All four of their sons, Richard, Edward, Andrew and William, took calculus and other classes from Sam Houston State University while at high school in Huntsville, and that helped to lay the foundation for their success in their own university experiences elsewhere later, both in undergraduate and graduate studies. While neither Mike nor Judy was educated at SHSU. during their years in Huntsville they have been impressed with its current emphases on teaching and on encouraging those students who are first generation college students, just as SHNI encouraged Victoria Fauth Bongard over one hundred years ago. They also feel that preparation of the next generation of teachers is of prime importance to the future of our area, state and nation. They hope to encourage excellence in preparation among students who plan to teach, as well as to help to defray a little of the cost of that preparation.