Cydney Schmidt collects the Kent Harfst Memorial Scholarship from Marta Paukert during the Webster City High School Award Ceremony Class of 2022 at Prem Sahai Auditorium.

There are names that take us somewhere and, when you are my age, that is likely back.

For instance, in the list of scholarships and awards given last night at Webster City High School, the name Cindy Warland Eddy revived a distinct memory.

There we were, lined up for Torch photos — this one was for mixed chorus — and I, being an underclassman, naive, and given to neglecting my hair, had pulled it into two short pigtails that you could describe as sticking out from the sides of my head.

“You will regret that for the rest of your life.”

It was Cindy Warland. She was a senior that year.

Cindy, in my experience, was given to definitive pronouncements. She was a lot like her father in that way. Some of you may remember G.D. Warland. Long before Pat Powers, G.D. was the voice of Hamilton County. Remember listening to KJFJ and hearing G.D.’s booming voice break in? “The Webster City Fire Department has been called to …” and then he would go on and give the exact address in case you wanted to watch something burn. G.D., being news manager of the local radio station, pretty much had a corner on breaking news. He was a magistrate court judge too. And yet, I scooped him once, long ago when I was young and he was helping me learn the ropes of local news coverage.

He said: “Don’t ever do that again.”

Cindy sounded like that the day she commented on my hair.

I know she thought she was right.

Turns out, she was wrong. I don’t care about the hair. But the memory … that comment is the only reason I remember that day in high school. Now there’s a scholarship named after her. Cool.

There’s a scholarship named for Don and Esther Reimer too. My mother loved Esther Reimer. She was one of the gals. One of the Country Club ladies who played golf and cards and inspired some pretty creative writing on my part. I dug through Mom’s recipe file for this memory: Esther Reimer’s Strawberry Fluff Pie. Someday, I’ll have to try it.

Here’s another scholarship: The A.J. Julian Memorial Scholarship. Jayce Abens won it this year. This one sticks with me because the trust was established in 1969, the year I was a sophomore in high school. Fun fact: Abens’ grandmother Deb Jaycox was a senior in 1969.

How about this one: the Effie McCollum Jones Memorial Scholarship. She was a Universalist minister and suffragette. Her old church was torn down years ago; it was across the street from Webster City Community Theatre building. I once promised a publisher I would write her biography. That one’s still on the “to do” list.

Far too many of the awards this year honor young people who perished way too soon.

Kent Harfst, for instance.

Another one that sticks with me is Joy Middleton Niklasen. I never knew her, but her mother, Marilyn Middleton, is an icon of kindness who I also remember from high school. No one deserves to lose a child, but this one seems to me to be particularly cruel because Marilyn is so nice.

Other scholarships honor people who remember their days at Webster City High School through the haze of the ’70s, and I would have to admit that is where I land.

This is with one of the newer scholarships: WCHS Class of 1971 Scholarship. Before this, we were known as the class that dispensed printed tickets to the senior kegger, which was raided by law enforcement. At our class reunions, we are fond of recalling who got back to town without being arrested. Last summer, I reminded our star football player, Kevin Kennedy, that he and I hid in the deep furrows of a plowed field. He said he knew he was hiding with someone!

Another friend walked through a hog lot.

There are such rich stories that come rising up from the list of scholarships presented Wednesday night, some of them obviously richer than others.

For example, though she was nationally known, Effie McCollum Jones chose to live out her days in Webster City, dying here in 1952.

And though it may not matter to the world at large, at least one of my classmates swam the Boone River twice that night of our senior kegger.

Jane Curtis is interim editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal.

Cydney Schmidt collects the Kent Harfst Memorial Scholarship from Marta Paukert during the Webster City High School Award Ceremony Class of 2022 at Prem Sahai Auditorium.