The Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship

For a few years now, I’ve considered the possibility of someday starting a charitable fund or nonprofit in honor of my mother Patricia (1952-2014), who passed away unexpectedly a year after I graduated from university. It was a project I had originally intended to start much further into the future, perhaps even decades from now. Recently, however, a women’s volunteer organization (the Orange County chapter of Junior League, or JLOCC) provided me with the opportunity to be part of an ad hoc committee founded for the sole purpose of reviewing scholarship applications from local high school seniors. The experience was tremendous, as I found myself greatly moved by the stories I read. There were so many incredible young people in my community who had overcome personal hardship and adversity, from various cruel forms of prejudice and discrimination; to potentially debilitating mental and physical health challenges; to abject poverty, abuse, and loss. While life events such as these could have easily left these teens hopeless and tailspinning, I was struck by their resilience as they picked themselves up and charted new life courses, using situations beyond their control as opportunities to grow and cultivate new powers of empathy. Perspective, as with all things in life, was key: they saw themselves not as victims, but as fighters and survivors, as movers and shakers emboldened to change the world for the better. With the right combination of mental and moral elements, pain could be transmuted into strength in a beautiful kind of alchemy.

I was honored to be part of an organization that could assist a select few of these outstanding pupils in achieving their aspirations, but I was also disheartened that I couldn’t do more to help. That’s when it occurred to me that I could set up my own scholarship fund in my mother’s memory — in fact, there was still time this academic year to do so. Although I couldn’t set up a formal, tax-exempt nonprofit or official charitable fund just yet, this scholarship could act as a precursor to an organization or donor advised fund I could eventually establish, perhaps decades from now but quite possibly much sooner. I’ve created this page as a resource for anyone interested in finding out more about the scholarship. It includes practical information about how to apply and is also a tribute to its eponymous founder-in-spirit, Patricia Tomocik.

My Mother, Patricia

My mother was a lifelong resident of Orange County, California, and grew up in the City of Tustin. She graduated from Foothill High School and went on to study for her teaching credential at Chapman College (now Chapman University). She was one of those truly beautiful people whose gracious heart and gentle spirit touched all she knew in ways both big and small. She was a loyal donor to her favorite animal charities and adored her spirited (but mightily stubborn) little beagle, Buster, who was with our family for 15 years.

The month before my mother died, I considered adopting a cat from a local rescue group who had sustained a serious eye injury as a kitten. I remember my mother writing a check to the rescue organization equal to the full cost of the cat’s expensive eye surgery. The cat’s eye, it turned out, was by this point beyond repair; but my mother told me to inform the organization that it was welcome to keep her generous donation so that the funds could be used to support other cats in need. This was a typical expression of my mother’s value system — she could never stand to watch anything suffer, and this was especially true of the helpless.

My mother was, quite notably, equally as giving to people, dispensing hundred-dollar tips to servers at restaurants and never rebuffing the requests of children selling chocolate bars for school fundraisers. She was deeply devoted to her family, and she and I shared a very special bond. It was the multitude of little things she did for others on a daily basis — often thankless, but for her intrinsically rewarding — and the pureness of heart with which she approached these tasks that set her apart from other people I have met. She was the proud, unflagging supporter of the underdog, a sensitive soul who was kind to a fault. She never treated people differently based on what they had: the intellectually disabled box boy at the local grocery store with his friendly hello and cheerful grin and the self-assured multimillionaire heading charity events were to her the same. She was an avid composer of exquisitely handwritten thank-you notes and giver of gifts and flowers. Every task she undertook she completed with the utmost conscientiousness and attention to detail.

Understanding the family culture in which my mother was raised is integral to really knowing and appreciating who she was. She was descended from Orange County farming families that had immigrated from Belgium and France, the Vermeulens and the Callens/Lagiers. From an early age, they had instilled in her an almost sacred reverence for the practical — a fierce work ethic and rigid code of familial responsibility, a sense of humility and disdain for arrogance, and an esteem for level-headedness (or “good old-fashioned common sense,” as she called it). She greatly admired her father Charles “Charlie” Vermeulen (1915-2003), whom she viewed as a moral exemplar. He had studied at “the School of Hard Knocks,” as he liked to put it, after he quit school at age 14 to support his family following the premature death of his mother. As a farmer-turned-businessman, he was sharp and shrewd, but always fair-minded. And although he often presented as serious and stern, his paternal devotion to his children and to others he cared about was beyond reproach. Espousing a notably philanthropic orientation, Charlie gave to causes important to him and taught his daughters to always be grateful for what they had been given in life; taking one’s blessings and life opportunities for granted was one of the worst sins a person could commit. In addition, while Charlie was a devout Catholic and, in many respects, a conservative-minded man of his Depression-era generation, he had a markedly progressive take on issues related to women’s personal and financial independence, to the empowerment of his two daughters and three granddaughters.

As such, my mother was someone with an intriguing blend of personality features: a well-grounded thinker possessing a vast store of practical wisdom and a certain degree of business savviness as her father’s daughter (although perhaps more heart-driven than hard-nosed). And at the same time, she fostered a deep appreciation for love, beauty, and purity in various forms, finding it in people, places, and causes, including those frequently overlooked. Giving to others during her 61 years was a way of demonstrating a grateful awareness of her blessings and a corresponding lack of entitlement, which she saw as poisonous; and it was also a way to simply be true to the convictions of her warm and generous heart.

The Scholarship

When I was writing my mother’s eulogy almost five years ago, I hoped to communicate to the audience that her legacy would be carried on after her death. By this, I meant I would do what I could to honor her memory and never to forget her, even as the passing years created more and more temporal distance between us. My mother was my first and best friend. The love that we shared, nourished and cultivated from infancy, shaped the person I became and has continued to sustain me by creating a foundation that has allowed me to love others; I do not believe there is any purer or more eternal love than the maternal bond.

Eventually, I thought of a fitting way to describe my mother’s lasting influence in her eulogy. The image of a stone being cast into water, and specifically the ripples that expand outwards from the point of immersion, came to mind: she had touched this small pocket of the world with kindness, but these metaphoric undulations could transcend her physical demise, expanding ever outward through the lives she impacted and the causes she inspired.

The Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship is one such ripple. Although my mother dropped her maiden name in favor of her married name, I’ve hyphenated the two names here since she was always proud to be a Vermeulen and felt so strongly rooted in her family of origin. Also, her personalized license plate bore the short but distinctive “PLV” before she married, and she never bothered to change it; I thought I would name the scholarship accordingly.

I’ve included the scholarship application below and will be accepting applications until May 15, 2019. The winner will be announced on or before my mother’s birthday, June 7. Please send all application materials and any inquiries you may have to plvscholarship@gmail.com. If you would like to contribute to the scholarship fund, feel free to reach out to me, and 100% of your donation will go directly to the scholarship recipient, added to the base amount that is advertised (but please be aware that it likely will not count as a tax-deductible donation. Hopefully I can establish a larger and more formalized scholarship fund by next year so that donations can be tax-deductible). For those of you who do decide to support the cause through a donation — as my mother would have said — thanks a million!