Informatics scholarship memorializes Star reporter

A School of Informatics scholarship has recently been announced bearing the name and honoring former Indianapolis Star reporter and editor Cecil "Corky" Richmond Jr. The fund comes from a $50,000 gift from Gary Wiggins, adjunct professor and director of the Chemical Informatics Program in the informatics school , and from Stanislavka "Mia" Wiggins, according to a press release. \n"This just seemed an appropriate way to honor the life of my friend and the many contributions he made to his career field," Wiggins said in a statement. \nThe scholarship will go to support undergraduate students pursuing a degree in the School of Informatics, with preference given to in-state residents. \nIn the press release, Wiggins said he chose to use the scholarship to honor Richmond -- who died in August 2001 -- as the two were friends while attending the same high school in Greens Fork, Ind. Growing up the two were in the same band and also worked together. While they initially chose to attend separate colleges, they both eventually ended up together again at IU.\nFollowing college, Richmond served four years as a U.S. Navy officer and afterward became a drama and arts reporter for the Star before later working as a travel writer, according to the press release. \nRichmond has strong connections to technology and was on the cutting edge of evolving technology during the time. According to the press release, he was a strong supporter of information technology for newspaper production and reporting. \nHe was actually one of the first reporters at the state's largest daily newspaper to use a Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, according to the release, which is one of the first laptop computers that held 24 kilobytes of memory - to file stories from the field via telephone modem connections.\n"He found this then-new technology to be increasingly helpful in meeting deadlines particularly while covering the Indianapolis nightclub scene and writing travel stories," Wiggins said. "Corky was very active in the profession users group for Atex, one of the main suppliers of hardware and software to the newspaper industry"