Keira Madison Gardner of Franklin is the 2022 Pendleton County High School recipient of the Jefferson R. Byers Memorial Scholarship. She is the daughter of Rich and Jodi Gardner of Franklin. During high school, she was a member of the National Honor Society, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, travel club, pep club, yearbook, and RAZE Tobacco Prevention. She played four years of varsity softball and four years of varsity soccer, holding a captain position in both sports during her senior year.
Her community extra-curricular activities include singing in the Pendleton Community Choir, acting at the Smith Creek Playhouse, highway cleanup, volunteer work, music, arts and crafts. She is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has been an active member of her youth group and church choir and had faithful attendance in seminary class for four years.
She has been employed by the Franklin Town Pool as a lifeguard, the catering staff by Puttin’ on the Ritz and at Eastern Mennonite University by Pioneer College Caterers, as well as a cave tour guide and server at Seneca Caverns.
Awarded each year to a graduating senior at PCHS, the scholarship was established in memory of Jefferson Read Byers who was a student at Franklin High School and tragically killed in an automobile accident on Feb. 9, 1973, when returning from a Franklin High School basketball game in which he was a manager.
This scholarship is given each year to a student who, upon recommendation by school faculty, has demonstrated Christian character, ideals and values, has shown concern for others, enthusiasm and love of life, interest, steadfastness, fairness and a determination to do what is best in whatever is attempted.
Gardner is pursuing a career in clinical psychology and plans to attend Potomac State College for two years before transferring to Marshall University to obtain her doctoral degree.
