Members of the family of Vernon Malone today presented Shaw University with a check in the amount of $89,680.45 which represents the contributions of family and friends of the late North Carolina State Senator as well as funds that remained in his campaign fund when he died in April 2009.

The funds will be used to establish the Vernon and Susan Malone Endowed Scholarship, which will offer financial support to deserving students within Shaw’s Department of Education.  Malone was an alumnus of Shaw as well as a member of its Board of Trustees.

“Senator Malone was a long-time supporter of Shaw and this act of generosity by his family continues that tradition,” said Shaw President Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy.  “We are proud of our association with the Malone family and it is appropriate that we will now have a scholarship within the Department of Education that bears his and his wife’s name.”

As a state senator, Malone was co-chairman of the education committee and appropriations committee for higher education.

Malone spent most of his life as an educator and school administrator before being elected State Senator in 2003.  As school board chairman, he presided over the merger of Raleigh city school and Wake County public schools in 1976.  He also spent more than 20 years as a Wake County commissioner.

Prior to that, Malone worked as a classroom teacher and as a school administrator and then became a superintendent for the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh.