4th Annual Aviation Scholarship Winners Announced
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 23, 2019
New Smyrna Beach, FL – Epic Flight Academy is pleased to announce the winners of its 4th Annual Aviation Scholarship Awards. The awards will be presented by New Smyrna Beach Mayor Russ Owen on Saturday, October 26 during the annual scholarship event from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Trace Martinson from St. Augustine, Florida has won the $20,000 scholarship, Bronwyn Rees from Rockledge, Florida has won the $5,000 scholarship, and current Epic student Andrew McCarthy has won $2,500.
Trace Martinson attends St. Augustine High School where he is enrolled in the Aerospace Program. He is an active Boy Scout and currently working on his Eagle Scout project. Trace served an internship with the Florida Flyers Flight Academy this past summer putting in 120 hours. He has also served as a cadet in the JROTC for the past 3 years and has achieved the rank of Captain. He has won numerous awards and accolades including the Bronze ROTC medal presented by The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Trace’s scholarship essays indicated the quality of his character.
“Integrity is an important attribute that has a lot to do with honesty. It involves honesty with yourself. With integrity, you follow your moral and ethical convictions. You do the right thing in all situations even when there is nobody watching.” Trace added, “Confidence is an important quality to have. Being able to tell a leader when they are wrong and hold them accountable in a professional manner allows for their leadership to grow and improve their leadership style. This will guarantee further success in future missions.”
Bronwyn Rees attends Rockledge High School. She is involved in numerous activities, including Girl Scouts, Civil Air Patrol, and National Honor Society. Bronwyn has volunteered 900 hours with the Civil Air Patrol over the past four years and has logged 10 hours of flight time. Her flight instructor, a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, recommended her for the scholarship writing, “Ms. Rees is an intelligent and motivated individual. She came to every lesson prepared and ready to learn. In the cockpit she excelled. I never saw her freeze and she made excellent progress during every lesson.”
In her scholarship essay, Bronwyn wrote, “A realistic view of one’s abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, in relationship to others is not an easy skill, as often we all want to be the best at all we do, but without an understanding of our own faults we cannot begin to understand or strengths and thusly where we belong within a group to achieve a mission.”
Epic Flight Academy CEO Danny Perna said, “Our judges faced a daunting task this year. With more than 20 excellent scholarship applications to review, I feel they made excellent choices in selecting Trace and Bronwyn. We look forward to welcoming them to the Epic family.”
This is also the first year that Epic awarded a scholarship to a current student. Epic COO Josh Rawlins announced the inaugural winner as Andrew McCarthy. “Andrew has demonstrated a positive attitude and dedication to his flight training here at Epic, and we want to acknowledge that commitment by supporting him with this special scholarship.” Andrew completed his private pilot’s license in 95 days and is currently working on his instrument rating. Epic plans to continue the practice of awarding a scholarship to a current student each year along with its traditional scholarships for new students.
To date, with the 2019 scholarships, Epic Flight Academy has awarded more than $100,000 to young aviators to pursue their dreams of flying. The aviation scholarship awards have supported 9 students to date. A ceremony will be held on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. New Smyrna Beach Mayor Russ Owen will make the scholarship presentations.