Our Story

Every scholarship we award begins with the same search: for a student like I once was.

As a senior at Mound Westonka High School, I had the grades, the drive and a clear sense of where I wanted to go. What I did not have was a way to pay for it. My father, Thomas O’Malley, a professor of psychology and a member of the Mound school board, died in 1964, when I was an infant. My mother, Phyllis, raised four children on her own while devoting more than four decades of service to the Westonka schools, first on the school board and later on the Minnesota State Board of Teaching. She gave everything she could to her family and her community, but when it came time to pay for college, the means simply weren’t there. I financed my entire education myself. I have never forgotten what it felt like to stand at that threshold, unsure whether I could cross it, or how much a helping hand would have meant.

That memory became a promise. When LeMarie and I established the O’Malley Foundation in 1998, our first act was to return to Mound Westonka. We wanted to find the student who has done everything right, with the character and the achievement to succeed, but for whom paying for college remains an open question. The Thomas and Phyllis O’Malley Scholarship honors my parents’ lifelong devotion to education and to the Westonka School District. Since 1999, it has provided more than 30 awards to graduating seniors who have gone on to study at colleges and universities across the country.

From that first commitment, our mission has grown to reflect everything our family holds dear. Inspired by our children’s love of music, we sponsor a national concerto competition with Midwest Young Artists Conservatory, which gives exceptional young musicians a stage on which to grow and excel. Guided by our faith, we have helped restore Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Rapid City, South Dakota, and St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago, because we believe sacred beauty lifts every soul who encounters it.

Education, music and faith may seem like three separate causes. To us, they are one. Each brings beauty and truth into the world, and each opens a door that might otherwise stay closed.

Today, our children, Leo, Margaret and Cecilia, serve alongside us on the Foundation’s board. Together, we will keep searching for the student who has earned the chance, the young musician waiting for a stage and the sacred places worth preserving, and we will carry this work forward to the next generation.

With gratitude,

Christopher and LeMarie O’Malley
Founders