After Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, Robert O’Brien, a former national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term, decided he wanted to do something to remember the slain conservative activist.
O’Brien and his wife Lo-Mari O’Brien decided to fund a scholarship through the Washington Crossing Foundation in Kirk’s name.
The Charlie Kirk Memorial Scholarship will give special consideration to applicants from Utah or who are applying to colleges in Utah.
Though O’Brien is originally from California, both of his daughters attended universities in Utah — one went to Utah Valley University and the other went to Brigham Young University.
O’Brien acknowledged how devastating Kirk’s death has been for Utahns. He told the Deseret News he hopes the scholarship will help Kirk’s wife and family know many Utahns love Charlie Kirk.
“The state’s citizens loved Charlie, and it is so tragic that his life ended there,” he said.
O’Brien said he and Lo-Mari knew Kirk from his time in the White House during Trump’s first term in office.
“When Lo-Mari, and I heard the news about Charlie, we were heartbroken and wanted to do something meaningful, even in a small way, to preserve his legacy,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said he also “understood how important (Kirk’s) role was in returning the president to the White House.”
“Lo-Mari and I knew him as just a great guy who everyone liked,” he said.
The new scholarship will be awarded annually to a high school senior.
Washington Crossing Foundation President Kay Weeder said the organization was “honored” to add the Charlie Kirk scholarship to its scholarship program. The foundation awards several scholarships to students who plan to build a career in government service and show “particular interest in moral courage, character, and duty to state and country.”
O’Brien was a recipient of a Washington Crossing Foundation scholarship, which helped pay for his undergraduate degree at UCLA.
Though the foundation is “non-partisan,” Weeder said like Kirk the foundation holds the “values of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution very dear.”
The foundation also has a “tradition of encouraging civil, intellectual and spirited political debate,” similar to Kirk.
“Charlie fostered the same critical discourse with America’s youth,” she said.
Weeder said she hopes that the O’Briens’ contribution to the Charlie Kirk Memorial Scholarship is “just the first,” and that in the future, the foundation will be able to award scholarships to multiple students in Kirk’s memory.
Kirk as an exemplar (soon-to-be) college graduate
As an 18-year-old, Kirk applied to West Point Military Academy in New York but was not accepted. Instead of pursuing a university degree elsewhere, he decided to forgo college and start Turning Point USA instead.
In the first year of founding TPUSA, Kirk met the president of Hillsdale College, Larry Arnn.
At Kirk’s memorial on Sunday, Arnn described his first interaction with the then-19-year-old Kirk. “I asked him some questions he couldn’t answer,” Arnn said. When Kirk asked what he should do, the college president responded, “You have to suffer. If you want to grow, you have to suffer.”
“Start with the Bible, read the classics, study the founding of America,” Arnn told Kirk. “In those places, you will find that there’s a ladder that reaches up toward God, and at the bottom of it are the ordinary good things that are around us everywhere. If we can call them by their names, they have being. And the beings of the good things are figments of God. You will find that article in Aristotle. You will find it in the Bible. You will find it in Madison and Jefferson.”
Arnn didn’t think he would hear from Kirk again, but a couple of weeks later, the young entrepreneur texted him his certificate of completion from a Hillsdale online course — the first of 31 online courses he would take from the college.
“I keep a list in my head of the six or eight young people — and I’m very privileged to know many inspiring young people — who are the best I ever saw,“ Arnn said. ”Charlie is the only one who was never a full time student at Hillsdale college who was on that list."
Kirk will earn a college degree posthumously in May from Hillsdale College, a liberal arts school in Michigan.
Contributing: Brigham Tomco