Bucholz-Derr World Language Scholarship

“Love and marriage, love and marriage/go together like a horse and carriage
This, I tell you, brother, you can’t have one without the other.” Frank Sinatra used to croon those well-known lyrics written by Sammy Cahn. The words are very appropriate to the love story of George and Mary Bucholtz, but they are especially true for Mary.

Inspired by the news of a Lutheran college taking shape in the Conejo Valley, George and Mary Bucholtz moved from Pacific Palisades to Thousand Oaks to be a part of all the excitement. George joined the facilities staff in 1960, remaining an employee for 27 years. The couple immediately became involved in the life of CLC and in the congregation of Holy Trinity Church. They became Founding Fellows at CLC, and they did whatever they could to improve the looks of the campus. These efforts included George’s handmade signs, Mary’s drapes for the dorms, and salvaging and preserving the castoffs they thought were worth keeping following the students’ departure each May.

George and Mary were extremely proud of their German heritage. They had a strong desire from the start to create a language scholarship. They began making small gifts, but the size of those gifts grew as their vision for the scholarship expanded. One way they raised money for the scholarship was to collect aluminum cans thrown away by students. Slowly but surely the Bucholz Language Scholarship took shape. Mary began taking classes, glowing with pride when she graduated with a degree in German in 1973. The following year she and George officially endowed the scholarship with considerable emotion. It was the fulfillment of their dream. George and Mary enjoyed 55 years of marriage before his death in 1988.

Mary was a farmer at heart. Her garden behind their home was a delight to behold, and she shared it generously. In her activities at the Goebel Center, she met a fellow earth lover, Fred Nelson. They were married in 1990. One of the finest contributions Fred made was to add his support and name to the scholarship, making it the Bucholz-Nelson Language Scholarship. After Fred’s death in 1995, Mary once again found herself a widow. But then John Burkhardt entered the picture. He and Mary enjoyed 13 lovely years together, until her death in December 2009 at the age of 99. In her very full and spirited life Mary had the uncanny ability to love and be loved, to adjust to the changes that came her way, and to find joy in living.

Georgia Derr was the only child of George and Mary Bucholz. She inherited her parents’ love of languages, earning her master’s degree at CLU in 1973. After her mother’s death, Georgia added her name to the family scholarship and changed its focus to Spanish and French, the two languages she taught for many years for the U.S. Department of Defense. The two languages remain the focus of the Bucholz-Derr World Language Scholarship which is designated for a student preparing to teach a world language at the middle or high school level.