New Flathead High scholarship fund will benefit theater students

Flathead High School recently received $3,000 to start a scholarship fund for theater students.

The fund will help students attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Tour and attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Seminar for Juniors.

Charlotte Brooks Lindsley, Randall King Brooks and Victoria Brooks Tyson created the fund in honor of their mother, Virginia Beth Cook Brooks, who died in 2003.

“We are thrilled that the Brooks family has chosen to honor our department with this scholarship fund,” Flathead theater director Valeri McGarvey said. “The generosity of the Brooks family will enable many deserving students to have the opportunity to visit one of the finest regional theaters in the United States.”

Virginia Brooks was born in 1919 to Dr. and Mrs. John Alden Cook. She grew up in Kalispell and graduated from Flathead County High School in 1937.

At Flathead High, Brooks was very involved in the drama department and acted in many productions. She also was active in the University of Montana’s theater program; as a freshman, she landed the role of Joan of Arc in George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan.”

Brooks studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, Calif., before moving to New York, where she met and married Navy Lt. Ralph Brooks. Brooks and her children returned to the Flathead Valley every summer, and her ashes were scattered at Many Glacier after her death.

Anyone wishing to contribute to the Brooks scholarship fund may contact McGarvey at 751-3547.