A Darling to ALL

Ray Darling received the “Superintendent’s Making a Difference” award by Superintendent Sandara “Sam” Himmel and the School Board at the October 14th, 2015, School Board Meeting.

Recently Citrus County lost a great caring, passionate person, Raymond “Ray” Darling, at the age of 98, who as profoundly impacted thousands of Citrus County students’ lives.

Ray Darling a retired United States Army colonel, accomplished a great deal during his lifetime, but perhaps the most impacting was to the students of Citrus County, where, Mr. Darling as a Rotarian founded the Citrus County Rotary Upward Bound Student Award Program.  In recent years the Rotary Clubs established the “Ray Darling Upward Bound Scholarship”, providing additional opportunities for Upward Bound alumni to receive college scholarships.

As a school board member, one of my favorite activities is to attend this quarterly award, given to students at the elementary, middle and high school level by their schools for making individual strides and accomplishments. Many students in our school system quietly make significant improvements in their academic and personal lives.  These accomplishments might go unrecognized if not for the Upward Bound Award.  Mr. Darling would share that while many students received awards for academic and athletic accomplishments, many students that might have even worked harder to achieve a personal or academic goal should also be awarded for their hard work. Now each year the award is given to approximately 500 students from grades 4th through 12th who have been selected by the staff of Citrus County schools, both public and private.  Parental attendance has grown to approximately 600 a year. This award is now over 25 years old.

Mr. Darling for years was the master of ceremonies at the event, later in years fellow Rotarian Tommy Thomas would step up to help emcee the awards.  Throughout the years no matter what was happening Mr. Darling would make every effort to attend, including at the most recent Upward Bound Awards this year, you would find Mr. Darling clapping, cheering and telling people about “these young people”. It wasn’t uncommon for Mr. Darling to bring flowers to some of the students he felt worked additionally hard to overcome lives challenges.  Many of these Upward Bound students have become teachers, mentors, and business leaders, and now positively impacting other students lives. If you asked Mr. Darling about that he would say something like, “that is how it is supposed to work”.

Thank you Ray Darling for your passion, vision, and heart. Citrus County students (and we) are better off because of you!

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