HONOLULU, HI – Friends of local jazz vocalist Jimmy Borges have raised more than $300,000 for a vocal music scholarship fund bearing his name at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The needs-based scholarship will benefit Hawaii high school graduates.

Borges, 80, is battling cancer.

Borges is thrilled with this legacy fund and wants the vocal music scholarship to encourage Hawaii teens to pursue their dreams, just as he has done during his successful 60-year music career. “There’s no such thing as a stop sign,” Borges said. “Just speed bumps.”

A team of the entertainer’s friends raised the scholarship money in less than a month:

• Robert Clarke, a cancer survivor and retired chief of Hawaiian Electric Industries (HEI)
• Walter A. Dods Jr., Matson Chairman and retired First Hawaiian Bank CEO and Chairman
• Leslie Wilcox, PBS Hawaii President and CEO

Contributions are still being accepted by Malia Peters at the UH Foundation: malia.peters@uhfoundation.org

About 50 scholarship donors were treated to a special concert by Borges last week at PBS Hawaii. The singer candidly explained his situation: a recurrence of cancer has migrated from his liver to his lungs. He does not expect to survive.

The footage will be used in an upcoming TV presentation, Jimmy Borges: Faced It All, scheduled to premiere at 8:00 pm on Thursday, January 21 on PBS Hawaii.

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Contact: Liberty Peralta
Email: lperalta@pbshawaii.org
Phone: 808.973.1383

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