McKennas Endow Scholarship at Meharry Medical College
Dr. Dwight and Beverly McKenna recently endow a scholarship fund for deserving African-American medical students at Meharry Medical College on the occasion of his 50th year class reunion from the school.
The McKennas’ connections to this storied institution stretch back decades, long before Dwight McKenna’s graduation in l966. He was guided and urged to enroll at the historic institution by Dr. Henry E. Braden, a Meharry alumnus, family friend, and a respected member of the New Orleans business and civic communities.
And Beverly Stanton McKenna’s ties go back even further. Her father Dr. Robert L. Stanton graduated from the school in 1929. She and her sisters grew up immersed in stories of his having boarded a train in Chicago headed for Nashville not knowing how he would pay his tuition upon arrival –armed only with the conviction that he would “make it somehow”—a story that left an indelible and lasting imprint on his young daughters’ appreciation for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the role they have played in the advancement of a people.
Dwight and Beverly McKenna credit their many blessings and successes to the fact that Meharry served as both the bedrock and a spring board in their life journeys.
Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Meharry Medical College is one of the nation’s oldest and largest historically black academic health science centers dedicated to educating physicians, dentists, researchers, and health policy experts.
Founded in 1876 as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College, Meharry was the first medical school in the South for African Americans.
Today, Meharry includes a medical school, dental school and a graduate school and is home to the Robert Wood Center for Health Policy. Meharry is one of the nation’s top five producers of primary care physicians and is also a leading producer of African Americans with Ph.Ds. in biomedical sciences.
