The Big Island Press Club recently awarded three $1,000 scholarships to Big Island students.
The press club annually awards scholarships to students pursuing a higher education in journalism or a related field. This year’s recipients were Lichen Forster, of Mountain View, Lehia Coloma of Kurtistown, and Briana Harmon, of Waimea.
Forster was awarded the $1,000 Bill Arballo Scholarship. A sophomore geology major at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, Forster is editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Ka Kalahea, and plans to be a science journalist. This is Forster’s second award. Arballo was a founding a member of Big Island Press Club in 1967 and its first president. A former United Press International reporter, he is honored through a scholarship funded by an annual donation of $1,000 from Bill’s daughter, Teresa Barth, and her husband, Bill. Arballo died in 2016.
Coloma received the $1,000 Hugh Clark Scholarship. A 2022 graduate of Kamehameha High School – Hawaii Campus, Coloma is a freshman at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Clark wrote about crime, politics, sports and volcanic eruptions for the Honolulu Advertiser and the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. He was a charter member of the Big Island Press Club Clark died in 2015.
Harmon received the Robert Miller/Yukino Fukabori Scholarship of $1,000. Harmon graduated from Hawaii Preparatory Academy this year and is a freshman at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.
Miller was a UPI reporter whose 1968 speech to BIPC inspired Ouida Hill, wife of state Sen. W.H. “Doc” Hill, to donate $1,000 to start the Miller Scholarship. Miller died in 2004. Fukabori reported “hard news” for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald as early as the 1930s. She later taught news writing at Hilo High School and funded a scholarship in 1993 before her death in 1995.