Kathy Aiken carried the clipping with her when she attended a talk about the Fallen Cougars Project at the Pullman Depot Heritage Center last Veterans Day. After the presentation, she showed it to the speaker, Samantha “Sam” Edgerton (’17, ’19 MA History), a doctoral student, and Raymond “Ray” Sun, the WSU associate history professor who started the project.
“Samantha and Ray looked at it, and said, ‘We don’t have this guy in our project.’ And it started us on this odyssey,” says Aiken.
After the November 2019 presentation, Aiken visited one of Sun’s classes, then wrote to her siblings about the project, asking what they thought about redirecting monies from the WSU fellowship in their father’s name to help fund the research. They all agreed. “Those students are doing great work,” Aiken says, noting the Fallen Cougars Project is “ a really nice, hands-on history project.”
The William D. Aiken Memorial Scholarship is generally given to undergraduate or graduate students in support of scholarly activities and travel relevant to the study of history. His family set up the scholarship in his honor after his death.