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LONGMONT — Family, friends and colleagues remembered Jerry Lewis as a gracious but determined man during Front Range Community College’s Veterans Day observation Monday.

“His passing reminds us all to not only appreciate each other, but to reach for the excellence we all have inside,” said FRCC veterans counselor Kim Moore.

The Longmont veteran, who headed the college’s Veterans Club, died of heart failure related to AL amyloidosis, a condition his family believes he developed after exposure to Agent Orange during his service in the U.S. Army from 1974 to 1982. Lewis was 57.

On Monday, the school’s Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society dedicated a scholarship for veterans in Lewis’ name.

Lewis graduated from FRCC in December with an associate degree in sociology and was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the same subject at Colorado State University. The retired mail carrier planned to become a social worker and help veterans.

“He was already a social worker. In his heart, that’s what he did,” said his widow, Deb Lewis. “He was just getting credentials to do it.”

The scholarship, she said, creates a legacy so her husband’s work won’t be forgotten.

The scholarship fund now includes $11,000. Half comes from a silent auction fundraiser the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, of which Lewis was a member, hosted this spring. The FRCC Foundation matched the funds raised.

Lewis was instrumental in the fundraiser’s success, said past Phi Theta Kappa president Elizabeth Vasquez.

“I can honestly say that without Jerry’s continued assistance and pushing and phone calls and visits and knocks on the door and getting people in the room, that silent auction benefit event would not have been the success that it turned out to be. … We very much wanted to have the opportunity to thank him by honoring him and to name this scholarship after him,” Vasquez said.

The $300 scholarship will be given to five students per semester for books and other education-related expenses, especially as student veterans wait for their VA benefits to kick in.

It will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Recipients must be full-time, degree-seeking students who have completed at least one semester with at least a 3.0 grade point average.

More than 100 veterans are enrolled at the FRCC’s Boulder County campus.

FRCC vice president Linda Curran credited Lewis with making the campus even more veteran-friendly.

“He started something. He was a tipping point for this campus,” she said.

FRCC president Andy Dorsey recalled that Lewis was a man with “an incredible amount of fortitude and belief.”

Though Dorsey said he was initially resistant to the idea, Lewis convinced him to posthumously award an honorary associate degree to U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman Christopher “Doc” Anderson last Veterans Day. Anderson was killed in an enemy mortar attack in Iraq in December 2006.

“It was a great lesson for me about the power of persistence and the power of persisting with a positive vision,” Dorsey said.

Magdalena Wegrzyn can be reached at 303-684-5274 and mwegrzyn@times-call.com.

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