GREENFIELD — Isabella Witte never guessed raising turkeys for charity would one day help pay for college. Yet that’s exactly what happened when the Riley Festival Association awarded the recent graduate with a $1,000 scholarship to assist with her studies at Purdue University.
Each year, the association grants a James Whitcomb Riley Festival scholarship to one deserving high school senior who has engaged in self-driven community service.
Board members were impressed by the fact that for three years in a row, Witte has raised turkeys that she donated to the Lisa Muegge Feast of Plenty, which provides a full turkey dinner and all the trimmings for 2,500 people each Thanksgiving at the Hancock County Fairgrounds.
Starting in 2018, Witte purchased young turkeys from a Hagerstown hatchery and raised them up to market weight, which was no small task.
“For the first six weeks they have to be kept at 85 degrees, and they don’t know how to eat or drink, so I had to teach them,” she said.
The first year Witte raised 15 turkeys, which she donated to the Feast of Plenty. She followed up with 25 turkeys in 2019, and 36 turkeys in 2020.
In all, feast organizers told her she helped provide the main course for about 3,500 Thanksgiving meals over those three years.
Members of the Riley Festival board surprised Witte with the scholarship at the senior awards ceremony at Eastern Hancock High School, from which she graduated earlier this month.
Witte, the daughter of Mike and Jana Witte, said she couldn’t be happier to have been chosen as this year’s recipient, and that the money will come in handy when she heads to Purdue to study nursing this fall.
She hopes to continue finding ways to give back to her new community when she’s away at college, but says she’ll always make time to come back home to Hancock County, especially when the Riley Festival is in town.
