“My father quit school in the fourth grade. My mother worked and wrote without the benefit of a high school education. I established this scholarship to honor my mother’s legacy and to help someone who doesn’t have enough money to pay for college,” stated VioDell Gosnell. The Mary L. and Ellis Wright Endowed Writing Scholarship in the English department provides support to a student studying writing and is renewable for up to five years of continuous study.

Viodell “Del” Gosnell grew up during the Great Depression riding trap lines with her father who was employed by the federal government to reduce the number of coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions preying on ranch animals. Her mother, Mary L. Wright, lost her father at the age of 13 and spent her early years working as a ranch hand. Self taught in reading and writing, Mary served as postmaster in the community of Red Rock while writing freelance articles for New Mexico Magazine and the Silver City Enterprise.

VioDell Gosnell’s husband Gene traces his roots to the American Revolution. He was born and raised on the Mescalero Indian Reservation near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, where his father worked as a logger. At the age of 15, after his father agreed to falsify his age on enrollment papers, Gene joined the navy and served three and a half years on the U.S.S. Tennessee, fighting in every pacific naval battle after the battle of Midway. “I saw a picture show with Dorothy Lamour in it (probably Aloma of the South Seas) and so I figured it was the right thing to do,” he says, “I really enjoyed it.” Gene served aboard the battleship during the battle of Leyte Gulf and the taking of Iwo Jima. He also survived a direct hit by a suicide dive bomber which “went right over my head.”

The Gosnells met and married in Santa Rita and have been together for 58 years. They spent nearly 18 years in Peru where Gene worked as mine foreman for the Toquepala copper mine and VioDell taught Spanish at a private school.