Alice V. Jewell and David B. Mills Friends of Music Scholarship Fund
Alice Viola (Avery) Jewell was born June 14, 1906 to farming parents near Erie, Michigan. She, along with her three sisters, attended a one-room country school where she completed 8th grade at 13 years of age. At age 16 she had saved enough money to attend Davis Business College in Toledo, Ohio, where she completed their secretarial program with the highest marks in her class.
In 1931 she married the Reverend M.R. Jewell, Sr., a Methodist minister, with whom she spent 60 wonderful years serving seven different congregations in the Michigan Conference. It was during those years that Alice shared her love of music as a choral conductor and soloist, both vocal and instrumental. She brought out the very best in everyone she worked with and was an inspiration to all who knew her.
Born in Scotland in 1904, David B. Mills began his classical keyboard education at the age of five. He had the distinction of performing on the pipe organ at the Glasgow Athenaeum at age nine. He moved with his family to Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1920. Over the next 20 years, he played professionally both in the United States and Canada with many of the noted dance bands and jazz greats of that era.
In 1934, as a result of his orchestra's radio program on CHWC, the Regina Daily Star's popularity poll named him Canada's most popular network soloist. In 1940, Mills and his wife began the process of acquiring U.S. citizenship. He entered the business world full-time although always continuing to share his musical talents with his friends and community. He died prematurely at the age of 50, leaving one daughter, Virginia Mills Jewell, who established this scholarship as a tribute to her father's memory in 1996.
The Alice V. Jewell David B. Mills Friends of Music Scholarship is awarded annually to undergraduate students enrolled in the Jacobs School of Music.