To Change a Life by Taryn

To Change a Life by Taryn - April 2025 Scholarship Essay

Journalism is more than just reporting facts- it is about telling stories that will encourage change, and that deserve to be heard. For me, it is driving me into advocating for veterans and their experiences. Through investigative reporting, interviews, and traveling across our country, I aim to amplify the voices of those who are overlooked, ensuring that their struggles are never forgotten. My family has a history of service dating back to the Civil War, when Thomas Parker joined the Union forces, I was raised on war stories. Living through their written accounts of World War II from the Pacific Islands, or their diaries that reccounted their time in the American Legion and American Legion Auxiliary, I always believed that all families shared a similar record. As I grew older and spoke more with my friends, fellow members in the Civil Air Patrol, and American Legion Auxiliary, I realized that so many veterans’ stories remain untold, fading away into history to be lost forever. Concentrating on journalism and communications studies in college will allow me to have the power to completely change that. I have already witnessed the huge impact that storytelling can have through my volunteer work with different USA Sports groups. Writing for USA Ball Hockey, I specialize in public relations stories and keep an important ever-changing log of historic data. By telling stories that are being published internationally, I have seen how the media can spark conversations, shift public opinion, and shape narratives. My first goal during college will be the creation of an online blog and database to house an incredible amount of historical content and facts pertaining to the stories of military service members, their families, and their friends. The groundbreaking online database will be ever-changing and evolving; this will create a living history of veterans and their stories to be told in an easy format for years to come. With veteran story submissions written by families or veterans themselves, people will be prompted to provide photos and videos detailing their experiences. Taking this information in, I will be able to create a profile for the veteran to house their story and link it back to their family. Every year, hundreds of thousands of family records are lost to natural disasters, accidents, and simple misplacements. With an engaging online community and interactive map, timeline, and webpage, more families than ever before will have constant access to the stories that changed their lives forever. Expanding into the community will be my next step as I host virtual panels with historians and war heroes online for all to view. My nonprofit would give directly back into the community with a focus on American Legion and American Legion Auxiliary programs, being that they inspired me so much and gave me the tools I need to succeed. Through partnering with schools, online magazines, American Legion Posts, Civil Air Patrol, and eventually higher level libraries and public records databases, the stories told on my blog will work to raise money for veterans in need. But my vision extends way past a nonprofit website. I will work to build a movement that partners with high schools to encourage students to speak with their families more about the history of their ancestors. The most rewarding project I ever did in high school included researching a veteran in my immediate family. I was able to unseal historical documents I never even knew my family had, and my intelligence on the subject of wartime experience grew vastly. The ‘My History’ project will be pitched to the Department of Education in every state in the hopes that someone else will resonate with how I once felt. Every family has a story to tell, and in theory, my project will help them tell it. By utilizing a partnership with my online database, the students will have the option to upload their family’s history and share it with the rest of the world. It will be a beautiful, ever changing community full of inspiring stories, heroic moments, and emotional accounts of unbelievable rescues. Mapping veterans’ journeys across places with timelines, interactive profiles, family records, and images will be the key to connecting our country as one. My movement will ensure that no veterans' stories will be forgotten. This is my one calling in life, and I am ready to fight for my passion with everything I have.