FREDERICKTOWN — The Fredericktown High School Alumni Association announces its 33rd fully endowed scholarship: the Jeannine Weller Davis Scholarship.
The association will first award the scholarship to a 2024 FHS graduate.
Jeannine’s husband, Roger Davis, summarized her accomplishments as he watched her lifetime of being “the wind beneath the wings” for her family, friends, neighbors, and numerous organizations in New Jersey, Florida, and Ohio.
Jeannine grew up on a farm just north of Fredericktown with her parents, Everett and Naomi Roberts Weller, and her five siblings, who were all FHS grads: Janice, 1960; Andy, 1962; Julia, 1964; Wendell, 1966; and Carroll, 1981.
In high school, Jeannine was in the National Honor Society, FHA president, on the Homecoming Court, and FFA Queen. Jeannine married and moved away from Fredericktown shortly after her 1961 graduation but took with her the values and lessons she learned in her hometown.
It took Jeannine no time at all to start applying those lessons to the benefit of everyone and everything she touched. She spent untold hours volunteering for various organizations, including the Morristown National Little League and the Twin Town Tigers Football and Wrestling teams, when she lived in New Jersey.
If any of her boys, Kerry, Todd, or Rich, were involved, Jeannine was at the fields or in the gyms helping in every way possible as a leader, an organizer, or a helper. No job was too big or too small for Jeannine.
Over 40 years later, the Morristown National Little League still annually awards the “Jeannine Davis Award” to their top volunteer. Jeannine raised so much money for the previously failing Twin Town Tigers Booster Club that all the teams and cheerleaders got new uniforms and equipment, and they were able to form a new 30-member Pom-Pom squad with new uniforms.
Jeannine did all her work as the Booster Club president at the fields with her clipboard and never held a formal meeting. Jeannine just asked people if they would like to help and what they would like to do. Jeannine made volunteering fun, including all who wanted to take part, and she held a party for all to celebrate every success.
Jeannine is also known for her work for charities, including holding sales and auctions of donated “stuff” from her own garage to raise money for worthy causes of her choice. The police, the ill, and those who needed a “hand up” were her favorites. Over $65,000 was raised over the years.
She was known for hosting the best parties and usually prepared most of the food herself. Jeannine never needed much of a reason to hold a party, and they were always with a fun theme, music, and microphone. Parties were held for all the teams, the volunteers, her family, her friends, and her neighbors. In 2015, Capital University awarded Jeannine an honorary degree to recognize her numerous community contributions.
Because “dining out” was not an option for her young family on a tight budget, Jeannine collected and shared “tried and tested” recipes and techniques with all the best cooks she ever met. Over time, this sharing and practicing enabled her to become a superb cook, baker, and presenter of tasty dishes.
When Jeannine finds anything great, she wants everyone else to have it, too, so she created the first edition of the “J9 TNT Cookbook” in 1980. The 7th Edition of that cookbook has just been released, and like everything else Jeannine creates, you can’t buy it, but she’ll give you one.
Jeannine loves to preserve memories and developed a special talent for working with photos and videos to permanently document the memories of families, friends, and events. She also used these skills to create a website for the FHS Alumni Association that houses every yearbook, which she personally scanned back to 1871, as well as a plethora of Freddie recognition for their Athletic and Academic stars and Veterans, among others. Jeannine’s marketing talent has been instrumental in helping to establish and grow the “Freddies Helping Freddies” endowed scholarship fund to a corpus of over $1,000,000.
When asked what drove Roger to establish this scholarship, Roger said, “It’s not easy to do anything for Jeannine, as she shies away from praise and would prefer to do something for you. This scholarship is a good way to recognize some of Jeannine’s accomplishments and share her belief that hard work and a good education can make the American dream possible for all who strive for it.”