HAMMOND | Former School Board member James Hornak's focus on education did not die when he was killed in a car crash last year.

The Hammond Education Foundation has established the annual James Hornak scholarship for $1,000, earmarked for a 2008 graduate whose parent belongs to a local building trades union.

The award highlights Hornak's 32-year service as a founding member of Carpenters Union Local 1406, a training facility for carpenters.

Hornak's widow, state Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond, said the trades scholarship was "the best way to honor him ... like his work was continuing on."

"It made us feel good and it's a feel-good all the way around," Lawson said.

Before his death on May 14, 2007, Hornak was to become a board member of the Hammond Education Foundation.

"Because of the outpouring of grief about his demise, there was an interest to memorialize him and that's why the foundation created this scholarship," said Gary Jones, chairman of the foundation's scholarship committee.

"The building trades afford a person to get into the world of work at an earlier age perhaps quicker than if you had gone to college," he said.

Hammond Education Foundation President Vic DeMeyer said the amount of the yearly scholarship would be re-evaluated as contributions increase.

Hornak graduated from Clark High School and Indiana University at Bloomington. He served on the Hammond School Board from July 2002 to June 2006.