Amanda Rackauskas Ross received a Fr. Yunker scholarship in 2009, her last year at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where she graduated with a B.S. in biology and a secondary degree in studio art. Drawing is her favorite discipline in the fine arts, and Creighton University has purchased and displayed several of her pieces.

Amanda is currently in her fourth year of medical school, also at Creighton. However, she was recently in Springfield completing a month-long “externship” in the SIU Medical School Department of Plastic Surgery. Now, she is serving a month-long externship in trauma surgery in Phoenix, AZ.

Following her graduation from medical school next year, Amanda will enter a residency in general surgery or integrated plastic surgery, with the ultimate goal of becoming a plastic surgeon in 6-8 years.

Amanda is the daughter of Mary Ann Rackauskas (formerly Ross) and the grand-daughter of Helen (Sitki) and George Rackauskas. She was attracted to Creighton University because it’s where her grandfather, George, studied business, graduating in 1939, exactly 70 years prior to her own graduation from Creighton.

Amanda was born and raised in Springfield, attending Chatham Glenwood K-8, graduating from Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in 2005.

 

Elaine (Manning) Kuhn of Springfield received a $1,000 Fr. Yunker Scholarship in 1974. It helped fund her associate’s degree at Springfield College in Illinois. Elaine went on to earn a B.A. in Spanish with a minor in English, as well as a secondary education certificate at Illinois College in Jacksonville.

The mother of three adult sons (James, Michael and Jonathan) and a grandmother of four, Elaine has been a Spanish teacher at Springfield High School for almost 20 years. Earlier in her career, she taught at Whitehall’s North Greene High School and at Williamsville High School. Along the way, she has been a world traveler, visiting 14 foreign countries, mainly in Europe and Central America. Another of Elaine’s special achievements was earning her master’s degree in Reading and Literacy from Benedictine University in 2007.

Years before Elaine ever heard Fr. Yunker’s name, her family had a tragic connection to the long-time pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Lithuanian Catholic Church. In the 1930s, her great-grandmother, Anna Sleveski Mazika, was killed by a hit-and-run driver on Ninth Street as she was walking home from confession with Fr. Yunker. The priest was one of the first to come to her aid.

Elaine says she became a Spanish teacher because of the mysterious appeal of listening to her mother, Pearl Bernice (Kavirt) Manning, and aunt, Lillian (Kavirt) Trello, speak to their mother in Lithuanian. “Sometimes it was only words and phrases, and although I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, I always thought, ‘that’s really cool; they’re having such a good time.’ I think that’s why I had a special interest in foreign languages and travel abroad – why learning and teaching another language always appealed to me.” A Springfield native, Elaine attended St. Joseph Grade School and Ursuline Academy.