Dagmar K. Riley Friends of Music Scholarship Fund
Dagmar K. Riley was born in Sweden in 1915 as the daughter of Olaf and Henrietta (Valberg) Karlsson. She was working in Chicago when she met and married J. Stewart Riley in 1943. They made their home in Bedford, Indiana, where Mr. Riley had merged two daily papers. Together they worked in the newspaper business, managing the Bedford Times-Mail, publishing papers in Illinois, and launching what is today the Bloomington Herald-Times.
Moving to Bloomington following the sale of the papers, Dagmar Riley continued to be active in community service work. She was the first woman to be elected as director of Public Service Indiana. She was a director and member of the Friends of Music at the IU Jacobs School of Music, a life member of the National Society of Arts and Letters, a member of Theta Sigma Phi and Women in Communications, and a life member of the Tulip Trace Council of the Girl Scouts of America.
For 14 years, Riley was a director of the Indiana University Foundation, becoming an honorary director in 1988. She was also a member and deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Bedford.
Upon her death in 1990, Riley established the Dagmar K. Riley Friends of Music Scholarship at the Jacobs School of Music. It is awarded annually to students at the Jacobs School.