Community Raising Funds for Charlie Northshield Memorial Scholarship

The community is coming together to raise a scholarship fund in memory of high school teacher Charlie Northshield. Northshield, who passed away last April, taught at Rye High School from 1974 until his retirement 2007.

“He was the original STEM guy,” said Rye High English teacher Jennifer McGrath Fall, who credits Northshield as her inspiration for her teaching career. “When Charlie died in April, so many people came out to just talk about his influence on them. People who became architects, people who went into the military. He reached kids in Rye who maybe weren’t always the typical scholar athlete kind of kids.”

The Charlie Northshield Memorial Scholarship will be awarded to one or more graduating seniors interested in pursuing careers in building, design, technology, the skilled trades, or the military. Seniors at the high school apply for various scholarships around this time and they are awarded in the spring.

Charlie’s wife, Liz, and his children, Andrew and Sarah, and Rye school staff including Fall and social worker Sandy Degenhardt are working on raising funds in coordination with the Rye City School District. The plan is to raise enough money to fund one or two $1,000 scholarships each year.

If you would like to contribute to the scholarship fund, checks should be made out to Rye City School District with “Northshield Scholarship” written in the memo. Checks can be mailed to

Attention: Jennifer McGrath Fall / Sandy Degenhardt
Rye High School
1 Parsons St.
Rye, NY 10580

You can also contact Fall or Degenhardt at the school for more information.