More than a dozen college students learning the skills needed for the restoration of classic vehicles — cars and boats — will benefit from the quarterly grants awarded by the Hagerty Education Program, which is administered through the LeMay — America’s Car Museum.
At the first quarterly meeting of the Hagerty Education Program board of directors, grants totaling $65,600 were awarded for the first three months of 2014:
- $40,000 to provide 8 students with $5,000 scholarships toward studies in the automotive restoration program at McPherson College in Kansas;
- $10,000 to provide two summer internships at the LeMay Museum in Washington (with funds going directly two the two students, not to the museum);
- $5,600 to fund a 10-week summer internships for a McPherson student at the Studebaker National Museum in northern Indiana;
- $5,000 for student scholarships at the Great Lakes Boat Building School in Cedarville, Mich.;
- $5,000 a student scholarship to study at the International Yacht Restoration School of Technology and Trades based in Newport and Bristol, R.I.
It was in January that McKeel Hagerty, a founder of the Collectors Foundation and chief executive of Hagerty Insurance, pledged that his company would donate $1.75 million within the next five years to what since then has become known as the Hagerty Education Program.
In the previous nine years and under the banner of the Collectors Foundation, grants totaling $2.75 million had gone to schools and museums with programs in automotive, aquatic and aviation preservation and restoration in 29 states, three Canadian provinces as well as to four national organizations for everything from scholarships to helping pay the cost of transporting school children to a car museum and from the restoration of a classic fire truck and to helping to pay a part-time auto shop instructor and providing automotive restoration programs for at-risk youth.
[pullquote]
The skills necessary to preserve and restore collector vehicles are disappearing.”
— McKeel Hagerty
[/pullquote]The mission — then and now — is to help ensure that the skills needed to preserve and restore classic vehicles is not lost.
“As a collector community, we’re faced with the reality that the skills necessary to preserve and restore collector vehicles are disappearing,” said McKeel Hagerty. “My vision for the Hagerty Education Program is to develop a program to meet that threat head on in a national effort to support students and organizations committed to the specialized training of those skills and trades vital to the collector vehicle industry.”
Grants, according to the organization’s website, go toward scholarships and to organizations “committed to ‘hands-on education’ and making a difference in the lives of young people through the appeal of historic vehicles and vessels,” thereby “building the next generation of collectors” and those capable of preserving and restoring such vehicles.
Details on those and other grants is available at the www.hagertyeducationprogram.org website. The website also provides information about donating to the 509(a)(3) program.
