NEWS
June 25, 2012
Jared Malone of Forney, TX Wins Clan Currie Scholarship
Jared Malone of Forney, Texas, has been awarded the Bill Millin Scholarship by the Clan Currie Society. This is the second year the Millin Scholarship has been awarded to a Lyon College bagpiping student.
Piper Jared Malone is the 2012 Recipient of Clan Currie’s Bill Millin Scholarship
Jared Malone, a sophomore music major, is a member of the Lyon College Pipe Band. He is the son of Rex and Kim Malone of Forney, Texas, and the grandson of Dennis and Darlene Littwin of Forney and David H. Malone of Dallas, Texas.
The Millin Scholarship was established by the Clan Currie Society to go to a student enrolled at Lyon College for the study of piping. Selection of the recipient is made by Lyon based on financial need and personal merit. The first recipient of the scholarship was Elliot Smith, a senior from Concord, New Hampshire.
Clan Currie established the Millin Scholarship in memory of William “Piper Bill” Millin, the Scottish bagpiper who played Highland tunes as his fellow commandos landed on Normandy beach on D-Day in World Ward II. He died August 17, 2010, at age 88 in Devon, England.
Immortalized in the 1962 film, “The Longest Day,” Millin was a 21-year-old private in Britain’s First Special Service Brigade on June 6, 1944, when his unit landed on a strip of beach code-named Sword Beach.
Millin was summoned by the brigade’s commanding officer, Brigadier Simon Fraser. Despite orders that prohibited the playing of bagpipes in battle conditions due to the high risk of attracting enemy fire, Lovat directed Millin to play on the beachhead. Following orders, Millin marched up and down Sword Beach playing the tunes Fraser requested.
Clan Currie continues to play an active role in preserving and promoting their highland heritage at Scottish Games, ethnic festivals, as well as community groups and classrooms. The Society produces a number of highly successful concerts featuring Scottish music and Gaelic poetry. Their “Tartan Day on Ellis Island” program is the largest attended Tartan Day event in the world.
Lyon is a top-tier liberal arts college in Batesville, Ark., featuring an acclaimed Scottish Arts program run by Pipe Major James “Jimmy” Bell, the United States Piping Federation’s 2012 overall professional bagpiping champion.