Release Date: 10 Feb 2006

Provo Daily Herald

August 20, 2005

The 18-year-old Salem resident is the oldest of seven children, so she knew her family couldn't foot the bill.  She turned to the Internet in search of scholarships, to see if she could qualify for any. 
"Actually I had wanted to find a scholarship to do with art, because that's what I love to do," she said.

Nelson found just that scholarship opportunity from the Ladies Auxiliary VFW, an offshoot of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.  The requirement to enter was a piece of patriotic art. So she found a sponsor, came up with an idea and jumped in.

"I decided to do a bunch of soldiers from different wars so that we remember all the soldiers who had died, not just some soldiers," she said.

Her mother, Brenda Nelson, said the painting is of a cemetery with hundreds of unnamed, unknown soldiers. The sky above is painted like a flag, so the viewer gets a sense of a flag draped over the cemetery.   (Follow this link to view the picture.)

"And so we wanted to portray the ghosts of these men who have fought in all of these different wars and sort of give a face to these headstones," she said.

"The Unseen Soldiers" won first place in a state competition and went on to the national competition. Once there, Nelson won first place, netting her a $10,000 scholarship and a trip to the Ladies Auxiliary convention this week in Salt Lake City.

"My mom jumped up and down," Nelson said. "She was so excited."

Jennifer Nelson and the rest of her family were thrilled as well, she said, although it took a little while for the news to sink in.

"I was just so ecstatic," she said. "I couldn't believe I had won, because we had been trying to figure out how to pay for college."

Nelson will start college at BYU-Idaho later this month and major in art.

But in addition to that, the trip holds another likely perk for Nelson and her parents; President Bush is slated to appear at the convention while they are they are there, although his appearance could not be confirmed.

"There are rumors to the effect," said Brenda Kelley, national public relations director for the Ladies Auxiliary. "We don't usually know for positive until right before he gets here."

While various speakers, presentations and meetings will take place throughout the convention, which runs Sunday through Thursday, there are some highlights, Kelley said. The auxiliary is pushing its newest program -- sending care packages to U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Qatar.

They have brought a moving van to the convention this year to collect items donated by auxiliary members for the packages, and Kelley said after the convention is over, the moving van will follow the workers back to Kansas and they'll start putting the packages together. She encouraged members of the public to participate as well.

For more information, visit www.ladiesauxvfw.com .