Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve nonprofit awards first college scholarships
Amigos presented the scholarships to the students from Long Beach and Orange County-area high schools on May 17. The recipients, their families and guests were then treated to a tour of the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, as well as the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach with Dr. Chris Lowe and Amigos volunteer Sam Lopez.
Ocean View High senior Alexa Barrera, the oldest daughter in her family and the first to attend college, was among the recipients. Barrera has been active in the Seahawks' college preparatory program, Stepping Up, and served on the stunt cheerleading team this year.
She will enroll in the nursing program at Golden West College.
The scholarship is named after Bill and Meredyth Stern, according to Amigos de Bolsa Chica President Mel Nutter. Bill Stern, an Amigos board member, died in 2022, and his wife Meredyth subsequently made a $2 million donation in his honor.
'She wanted to honor Bill by providing Amigos with some additional resources for the different things we were doing, including encouraging us to create the scholarship,' Nutter said. 'It's been kind of an exciting ride for us, because of course part of what Amigos de Bolsa Chica is interested in is environmental education. It's a new thing. On the other hand, we anticipate we're going to be doing it from now on out.'
The others awarded included Annabelle Kerendian of Lakewood High, Jillene Wetteland of Long Beach Poly High, Fernando Ortega of Santa Ana High, Yayoy Espinoza Soriano of Segerstrom High, Jim Le of Westminster High, Tiffany Nguyen of Garden Grove High and Kristy Huynh of Rancho Alamitos High. Each were selected after Amigos de Bolsa Chica received numerous applications.
Nutter said a framed picture has been signed by each recipient and will be sent to Meredyth Stern. He said it was fun meeting and celebrating the high school seniors.
'I had never been to the Shark Lab myself before, and it was really impressive,' Nutter said.
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Hall, a local rural free delivery carrier in Glasgow who raised his wife's son as his own. Bill Luster graduated from Glasgow High School in 1962 and headed off to Western Kentucky State College, where he began dabbling in photography as a hobby. He returned home to Glasgow in 1964 where he became a photographer and sportswriter for the Glasgow Daily Times. He improved his skills there for five years — occasionally shooting freelance photos for The Courier Journal — before The Courier Journal and Louisville Times hired him in 1969. He married the former Linda Shearer in a ceremony at Highland Baptist Church in 1976. Over 42 years at the Courier Journal, Luster would become the most well-known of the newspaper's photographers, winning some of the biggest national awards and leading the National Press Photographers Association as its president for a term. He had stints as the newspaper's director of photography and was the paper's chief photographer when he retired in 2011. He was part of the teams that won two Pulitzer Prizes for The Courier Journal. The first was the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for the newspaper's coverage of court-ordered busing, and the second came in 1989 when the newspaper's news and photo staffs won the award for local reporting for its coverage of the Carroll County bus crash. The crash — the nation's worst drunken-driving accident — killed 27 adults and children on a church bus returning to Radcliff, Kentucky, following an outing to Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati. Luster's iconic photo of police investigators peering at the burned-out shell of the bus on the newspaper's front page on May 16, 1988, gave readers a graphic image of the tragedy that happened two nights before. Luster was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2012. He is survived by his wife, his son, Joseph, and daughter-in-law, Lauren, and two grandchildren. Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@ You can also follow him at @ This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Bill Luster, former Courier Journal photographer, dies at 80
