Oscar Lee Thorne, Sr. Endowed Scholarship

Oscar was born on the 14’" of February 1926 to William Wain and Lucy Williams Thorne in Houston, Texas. He received his AA degree from Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas in 1948. his BA in Mathematics and Chemistry in 1950, and, in 1951, his MA in Administration Education, both from Sam Houston State Teachers College. He took additional graduate work at Texas A&M University. Oscar taught math in Huntsville at Huntsville Junior High and served there as assistant principal and principal. He served as an elementary principal and as the director of personnel and curriculum for the Huntsville Independent School District. After retiring from HISD he served as the Walker County Tax Assessor and Collector. The Thorne Family was devoted to young people and helping them to succeed in finding their purpose in life. Bonnie was born in 1928 in Houston, and was raised there. In 1945, she went to Lon Morris College. and she and Oscar were married the next year. She earned her associate degr1te from Lon Morris in Jacksonville, Texas. Bonnie began working in the Sam Houston State Teachers College Registrar’s Office in 1956 and earned her Bachelor’s in 1960. In 1961 she began working in the Sam Houston Slate University library. She retired from SHSU in 1993, when she was 65, but stayed on as an adjunct until 2002.