How Dr. B Honors Her Great-Grandmother Through Scholarships

Seventy-Five Reasons to Believe

You walk in through the front door to a table full of pastries, charcuterie boxes, hot coffee, and personalized cookies.

Everything looks welcoming, intentional. Off to one side, a room buzzes softly as scholarship recipients get their makeup done. Another space holds racks of clothes—outfits that each student brought for their photo session. In the main room, a professional photographer waits, lights adjusted, lens focused, as scholarship recipients pose with confidence in front of the camera. And off to the side, Dr. Daria Milton-"Dr. B," as everyone calls her—is beaming behind her phone, snapping pictures like a proud mom.

Dr. B doesn't have children of her own. Her kids are someone else's children, patients, students, recipients, followers.

Today in particular, she's the mother of seventy-five. They may not share her blood, but they are hers. These students are this year's scholarship recipients. She sees them, celebrates them, and in moments like this, captures them exactly as they are: her pride and joy.

Dr. Daria Milton is more than a physician-she's an advocate for education. Every year, she visits school career days, college campuses, and job fairs to speak to students about her work in the medical field. She recruits, encourages, and plants seeds. She doesn't just want you to go to college-she wants you to love what she does. She wants a new generation of Dr. B's-young people from small towns with big hearts who believe they, too, belong in medicine.

These scholarships aren't just financial help. They're not just rewards for students pursuing a career in medicine. They're recognition. They're Dr. B's way of saying, I see you. Your effort matters. Your dreams matter. In a world where praise is rare and self-worth can feel optional, the Louella Bolt Memorial Health Professions Scholarship and the World Scholarship are designed to do more than pay for school-they're meant to validate a young person's sense of purpose.

To remind them that someone believes in them before they've even fully learned to believe in themselves.

Dr. B didn't grow up with applause. Her support system was limited. Her mother, a military mom carrying heavy emotional baggage, was present but distant.

She's still alive, and their relationship remains complicated-just as it was during Dr. B's childhood. Recognition rarely came. Achievements were often dismissed or met with doubt. It was painful at the time, but with age came clarity: people who struggle to find happiness within themselves often struggle to celebrate it in others. So Dr. B looked elsewhere for support—just a few blocks away.

She grew up walking back and forth between her house and her great-grandmother's in Thibodeaux, Louisiana. Close enough to visit anytime, but far enough to feel the absence of what she needed. Her great-grandmother lived in a three-bedroom project home, a safe haven for anyone going through hard times. Dr. B was one of them.

"She was the core of who I am," Milton says.

Her name was Louella Bolt. She raised eight children, fed half the neighborhood, and made the kind of red beans and gumbo you remember fifty years later. "I walked into her kitchen one day and there was a skinned raccoon on the counter," Dr. B recalls, half-laughing, half-traumatized. "We did coon. It was horrible." But it was real. It was Louisiana.

And it was love-strange, sturdy, and unforgettable.

So when Dr. B talks about support, she doesn't speak in vague terms. She means the porch where she rocked beside her great-grandmother because the TV was off-limits. She means playing in ditches with cousins, eating what was served, and watching people survive without ever being celebrated. That's what stayed with her. That's what shaped her.

And that's why she gives.

The Louella Bolt Memorial Health Professions Scholarship is awarded to Starr County students pursuing careers in medicine, nursing, public health, therapy, or any health-related field. It's for those who show up for others, who serve quietly and consistently, and who carry the same kind of graceful giving Dr. B saw in her great-grandmother. "She didn't live to see me become who I am, but she shaped it," Milton says. "This scholarship is part of that."

In addition to the Louella Bolt Memorial Health Professions Scholarship, Dr. B also awards the World Scholarship, a fund with a wider scope. It supports Starr County students who want to explore education beyond their immediate surroundings-whether that's a university in another state, a study abroad program, or simply a dream bigger than what they've been told is possible. One recipient went all the way to Alaska. Others may stay closer to home. But the message is the same: your zip code should never define your limits.

This year's celebration was bigger than ever. The event included professional photo shoots, coordinated moments, and social media coverage-all designed to make the students feel seen.

"Honestly, I'm just excited we had so many people," Milton says.

"All the kids were great this year. It's really nice to see so many kids interested."

But for Dr. Milton, it's never just about the scholarship money.

"I could just write a check," she says, "but that's not the point." The point is the moment. The photo shoot. The spotlight. The feeling that, even if it's just for a second, someone saw you.

"Some of these kids-this might be the only time in their whole life that someone tells them they're beautiful, that they're accomplished, that they're worthy of attention," she says. "So we create that memory. We want it to stick."

Dr. B knows how easy it is to carry doubt. "A lot of successful people have impostor syndrome. You don't feel presidential. You don't feel like you deserve it. Sometimes the only thing you have is someone else telling you that you can do it."

That's why she makes it public. That's why she gives loudly. In communities where praise can be hard to come by-even from your own family—she makes sure these kids know: what you did matters.

"Because life doesn't give out achievement awards when you're older," she says. "Nobody hands you a certificate for just surviving."

So she gives out one while she can.

What started as a small gesture rooted in memory has become something far bigger. It's legacy, in motion. Not just of Louella Bolt, but of every woman who made a way out of no way. Dr. B isn't just funding education-she's rewriting how young people see themselves in places where self-worth is often taught as optional.

"I'm older now," she says, "but I remember sitting on that porch. I remember not being told I was great. So if I can be that voice, even just once, then I've done something."

And that something, in Starr County, is already changing lives.

@Santitos

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