There’s no such thing as a stop sign, just speed bumps.Jimmy Borges
Friends of local jazz vocalist Jimmy Borges have raised more than $300,000 for a vocal music scholarship fund bearing his name at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. The needs-based scholarship will benefit Hawai‘i high school graduates. Borges was the featured special guest at the 2014 A Mānoa Christmas presented by the students of the UH Music Department and the Theatre & Dance Department.
Borges, 80, is battling cancer.
Borges is thrilled with this legacy fund and wants the vocal music scholarship to encourage Hawai‘i teens to pursue their dreams, just as he has done during his successful 60-year music career. “There’s no such thing as a stop sign,” Borges said. “Just speed bumps.”
A team of the entertainer’s friends raised the scholarship money in less than a month:
- Robert Clarke, a cancer survivor and retired chief of Hawaiian Electric Industries (HEI)
- Walter A. Dods Jr., Matson Chairman and retired First Hawaiian Bank CEO and Chairman
- Leslie Wilcox, PBS Hawai‘i President and CEO
Contributions are still being accepted by Malia Peters at the UH Foundation: malia.peters@uhfoundation.org.
About 50 scholarship donors were treated to a special concert by Borges last week at PBS Hawai‘i. The singer candidly explained his situation: a recurrence of cancer has migrated from his liver to his lungs. He does not expect to survive.
The footage will be used in an upcoming TV presentation, Jimmy Borges: Faced It All, scheduled to premiere at 8:00 pm on Thursday, January 21 on PBS Hawai‘i.
[This post adapted from a release courtesy of PBS Hawai‘i, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and Hawai‘i’s sole member of the trusted Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).]