No obstacle too great
Scholarship supporters see beloved son's motivation in
computer science student
Patti and Clarence Hamilton have empowered UNT student Jon Holman through a scholarship they created in memory of their son.
photo by Jonathan Reynolds
Benjamin Hamilton, a 2003 UNT graduate, had two lifelong loves: computers and the great outdoors. In a 2006 photograph that he jokingly told his mother he was going to post on match.com, he’s standing by a wildlife feeder he had just erected on his parents’ ranch.
You can’t help noticing the laptop under his arm. What you can’t see is the Macintosh apple tattooed on his shoulder, hidden on that chilly fall day by a long-sleeved shirt.
Jon Holman’s laptop is usually within reach, too. It’s his resource for communication, entertainment, discovery and self-expression.
For Jon, just 19 and a junior at UNT, it’s also the hardware of his dream career: teaching computer science to college students.
Jon’s dream is in the making partly because of a scholarship Ben’s parents, Patti and Clarence Hamilton, established in UNT’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering with help from the UNT Foundation. The Benjamin T. Hamilton Memorial Scholarship is a tribute to their son, who died after an auto accident last spring.
“Since I was a toddler, I was always taking things apart and putting them back together again,” Jon says. “That’s how I learned how things worked. I still do. I think of myself as a creative problem solver, and creative problem solving is what computing is all about.”
Like Jon, Ben had been fascinated with how computers work since he was a boy. His programming aptitude was noticed when he was a high school junior by Paul Fisher, UNT’s computer science chair at the time, who hired him to work on a NASA project.
“Ben was hungry to learn, and Paul took him in and taught him all the latest technology,” Patti says. After graduating from high school in 1996, Ben moved away for college, but soon returned home. He had developed bipolar depression, and tasks he had been able to do easily became much more difficult. Refusing to give up, he enrolled at UNT.
“Even though Ben had to struggle to concentrate and stay in school, he never wavered from his goal,” his mother recalled. “Ben faced his disease with tremendous courage.”
There was great celebration when Ben earned his computer science degree in 2003. Because the side effects of his medications kept him from a normal programming job, he worked on the family ranch instead — until April 2007, when he felt confident enough to apply for a position in College Station. The accident occurred on the way back from his interview.
The Hamiltons’ decision to memorialize their son’s dreams and determination was immediate.
The scholarship criteria were simple: first consideration goes to computer science majors who are emotionally, mentally or physically challenged. Jon has used a wheelchair since age 8, when his legs were paralyzed by minicore myopathy, a form of muscular dystrophy.
“All my life, I’ve done everything I can to not let my disability define me. Just like Ben did,” Jon says. “As long as I can sit up, I can learn, I can create and I can teach.”
The Hamiltons agree.
“That’s exactly the spirit we want to promote.”
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2008 edition of UNT’s alumni magazine, The North Texan.
