Brian & Denise Spires Scholarship Fund

The Brian & Denise Spires Scholarship Fund was created in 2016 as an acorn fund. In 2021, it began making scholarship awards to support students who have attended River Valley High School for their entire high school career, maintained a GPA of 3.0+ and been an active participant on at least one varsity sports team during their senior year.

Brian is a life-long community member; Denise moved to Marion after growing up in Indiana. Both are graduates of River Valley Local School and Ashland University. The Spires have been married since 1980 and members of Emanuel Lutheran Church. And, both have long-standing careers with GTE/Verizon/Frontier, Brian as an OSP Manager for 40 years and Denise retired after 30 years as a project manager. She has also worked as a data manager with META Solutions and as a substitute teacher.

“Brian and I are willing to give back to our community because people and places in Marion have helped to shape us and our family,” said Denise. “Education is very important to us and achieving our college degrees was accomplished in a non-traditional way. We worked full time and went to school in the evenings for 12+ years. It was not easy; so, we hope that committing to scholarships will allow others to focus solely on their education. Our children were blessed in this way and we would like to share that in our gifts.”