LIVERMORE — Maine high school seniors have until June 30 to apply for a $1,000 scholarship in the name of Ethel “Billie” Gammon, who founded the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center.

One $1,000 scholarship is awarded each year to a senior who has been inspired by their experiences at Norlands, and plans to pursue a field that can be related to the Livermore center’s mission, Norlands acting Director Sheri Leahan stated Monday in a report.

For example, this field includes history, American studies, education, museum studies and sustainable agriculture.

Seniors must complete a simple application and submit a 300- to 500-word essay about how the Norlands relates to and/or has impacted their interests and life plans.

A selection committee will review applications and choose the recipient based on the strength of the essay. The recipient will be notified by Aug. 1.

Last year, on the first anniversary of Billie’s passing, the Norlands Board of Trustees established the Ethel “Billie” Gammon History Education Scholarship Fund to honor her “bottomless enthusiasm for sharing American history by providing support in her name for ‘learning through fun,’” Leahan said.

Billie began her work at the Norlands in 1954 with restoration of the library. She went on to develop a world-renowned museum education program based on living history methods, Leahan said.

“Her dream for Norlands was that through real-life experiences in the past, children and families would come to appreciate the everyday struggles of the people who lived in the late 1800s in rural Maine,” she said.

Gammon took “great joy,” Leahan said, in seeing visitors to the living history museum that she founded “get it” — that history education could be fun and that lessons from rural life in the 19th century are timeless. And also to feel what it was like to sit on the hard school benches, to know the day started and ended with family chores and responsibilities, and to understand the rural Maine philosophy of everyone pulling together.

Maine schoolchildren continue to visit Norlands today as part of the Maine history curriculum.

For more information about its programs or to download a scholarship application, visit www.norlands.org.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com