{"id":1096,"date":"2016-12-08T17:46:47","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T22:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/?p=1096"},"modified":"2025-07-25T17:58:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T21:58:00","slug":"being-the-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/being-the-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Being the Best"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHello, I\u2019m Jeff Raggio, and I\u2019m fabulous.\u201d <strong><span style=\"color: #c25700\">Raggio \u201907<\/span><\/strong> was sitting in the\u00a0back of a convertible, greeting <span style=\"color: #c25700\"><strong>Ken Knowlton \u201907<\/strong><\/span>, a new transfer student. Raggio was\u00a0just joking around, being himself, \u201ceverybody else be damned,\u201d says Knowlton. It was an unforgettable first impression, typical with Raggio.<\/p>\n<p>He was the kind of person others wanted to be around, even if it was only to argue with him. The native Texan was opinionated and loved to debate, engaging students and professors on politics and current events, always with an open mind. Witty and sarcastic, driven and supportive, his mantra was \u201cBe the best.\u201d He said it constantly, earnestly and in jest, whether a friend had a test or was going to eat dinner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s something that he wouldn\u2019t mean too seriously, but on a deeper level, he meant with every bone in his body,\u201d explains <strong><span style=\"color: #c25700\">Pete DiLeonardi \u201907<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Tragically, Raggio died two years ago in a four-wheeler accident. He was a lawyer with a promising career in Dallas. His friends still think about things they want to tell him, the advice they want to hear. They also want his name and his memory to live on. \u201cHe was one of the most warm and outgoing and infectious personalities that I can ever remember,\u201d says <strong><span style=\"color: #c25700\">Julia Pollack \u201907<\/span><\/strong>. Which is why some of his closest Goucher friends\u2014six of them in all\u2014wanted to do something with the college to honor Raggio. <strong><span style=\"color: #c25700\">Lee Gerstein \u201907<\/span><\/strong>, who now works at Goucher in residential life, joked that Raggio would have wanted a big statue of himself (he liked to put on a fake ego). More seriously, the group talked about gifting a bench to the campus, but they wanted something more profound and lasting.<\/p>\n<p>Then Gerstein spoke with Greg Permison, Goucher\u2019s director of campaign and strategic initiatives, who suggested a Dorsey Scholarship. The group\u00a0would need to raise at least $20,000 to give to a student incrementally each year of college. The friends loved the idea. As <strong><span style=\"color: #c25700\">Gary Decker \u201907<\/span><\/strong> points out, \u201cSomeone who graduates from Goucher&#8230;with good fortune they live for another 60-plus years, and it\u2019s a big deal to say that Jeff can and will live on in that person\u2019s life in some small way for such a long period of time.\u201d The group will also give the student mentoring and networking opportunities. They know Raggio would be touched by the effort. \u201cExpanding access for students to education, or making it a little bit easier to pursue their passion, is something that I think Jeff would celebrate along with us,\u201d says Decker.<\/p>\n<p>But the money is just part of it; the statement\u00a0the money makes is the real impact. All of Raggio\u2019s friends mention how important education was to him, and how special his time at Goucher had been. \u201cWe really wanted to keep Jeff\u2019s memory alive and keep his fun-loving and smart memory a part of the Goucher experience,\u201d says <strong><span style=\"color: #c25700\">Vaughn Frisby \u201908<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Each of the six in the group have given to the scholarship, and they hope to reach their goal by their 10-year reunion next spring. They would like the scholarship to go to a student \u201cwho has the same kind of intellectual curiosity and lust for life that Jeff did,\u201d says Knowlton.<\/p>\n<p>And for those who are thinking of a monthly or onetime gift to the scholarship fund, Gerstein puts his own gift in perspective: \u201cI like to think of it as buying two bottles of bourbon a month\u2014because Jeff loved bourbon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scholarship honors a friend&#8217;s lust for life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":1097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7935,55234],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[87484],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goucher-today","category-giving-to-goucher"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Being the Best | Goucher Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/being-the-best\/\" 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