Mount Mercy Academy is proud to announce the establishment of the Alicia Campbell Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship will be awarded for the first time during the current school year. The scholarship, which is set to be an annual scholarship, will help students obtain a Mount Mercy education.
A Mount Mercy graduate from the Class of 1990, Campbell passed away in 2017 after a courageous battle with ovarian cancer. This past June, Alicia’s mother, June Campbell Van Remmen, Class of ’67, along with Alicia’s husband David Hassett, her cousins and closest friends, designed and held a Scholarship Scavenger Hunt to fund the scholarship to honor the memory of Campbell. Contestants formed teams and fanned out all across Buffalo in search of the answers to the clues. The hunt was financially successful and the group hopes to make it an annual event.
Campbell became a successful speech pathologist after graduating from Mount Mercy, working for the Buffalo Public Schools. She married Hassett and they raised their daughter Margaret “Maggie” Hassett together.
Her cousin, Siobhan Campbell Gould ’92, has no doubt that her cousin was a student who was well-known to her classmates and teachers for her sense of optimism and spunk. “Rarely did you see her without a smile on her face and more often than not, you heard her before you saw her,” Gould remarked.
Campbell’s mother concurred with Gould’s opinion. “My daughter was a truly amazing person who enjoyed her life, took life seriously but also had a lot of fun,” Van Remmen stated.
Gould recalled many memories of her cousin. Campbell was an avid reader and a fabulous writer as well. She loved to knit and loved to share her sweaters, hats, mittens and blankets with those she cared about. Additional passions that Campbell possessed were baking, cooking, entertaining, traveling and she also discovered running later in life. “She ran many 5Ks, not so much because she loved running, but because of the opportunity it afforded her to make new friends, be part of a team, motivate others and then have a drink or two at the finish line,” Gould fondly related.
In addition, Campbell was willing to try virtually anything and did it all with a smile from ear to ear. However, Gould noted that the only thing that could cause her cousin to stop smiling was if Campbell lost at anything she did. “She absolutely hated to lose at anything,” Gould stressed.
“Alicia loved to love! She loved her mother June, her aunts, uncles, cousins, countless friends and coworkers, her husband Dave (the exact male version of herself) and of course no love topped that of her only daughter Maggie,” Gould said.
“She was not afforded as many days as she and those who loved her would have hoped for, but she lived each day like it was her last, so her life was definitely viewed in terms of quality, not quantity,” Gould concluded.
This year the inaugural Alicia Campbell Memorial Scholarship was awarded to sophomore Andra’nique Hudson, daughter of Carlisha Mitchell of Buffalo.
