Tim Leake graduated from Du Quoin High School in 1983. When he’s asked why he has spent most of the last 20 years serving on the Du Quoin Education Foundation board — currently as president — his answer is simple. "I just wanted to give back."

He's been with Pepsi MidAmerica in Marion for 38 years, rising to director of training as the company grew from 389 employees to more than a thousand. When his peers came out of college and headed to metropolitan markets for better opportunities, Tim made a different calculation: he could build a real career and stay in the region that raised him. That decision shaped everything else.

The foundation was developed around 2007 under then-superintendent Dr. Gary Kelly, with the goal of getting scholarship dollars into the hands of Du Quoin graduates heading into college and career pathways. Tim got involved early and has been engaged for 17 or 18 of the program's 20 years. The numbers accumulated quietly. By his estimate — extrapolating from records — the foundation has awarded somewhere over $1 million in scholarships since its founding. Last year alone, it distributed $68,000. Through matching programs with John A. Logan College, local dollars stretch further. Mini-grants to teachers fill special activities and field trip experiences: tablets, materials, and other needs that budgets don't always cover.

When his own children went through the scholarship process — his daughter graduated in 2009, his son in 2015 — Tim stepped away from the board.

"I took a couple of years off because I didn't want to have any sort of bias," he says. "I recused myself."

He stepped back in both times once the process was clear.

His son went on to Missouri S&T, earned a degree in petroleum engineering with a minor in geology, and now works for the EPA in Springfield. His daughter graduated from SIU with a marketing degree and built a career of her own. Both stayed in the region. Both, Tim suspects, will come back eventually.

"There's a magnetism to it," he says. "You leave for opportunity. But at some point, you circle back."

The foundation kept going even when nearly everything else stopped. In 2020, Tim says, they may have been the only fundraiser in Perry County. They held their golf outing, distanced, and awarded scholarships digitally. Then in 2021, students returned for the in-person scholarship dinner still wearing masks — and were visibly overjoyed just to be in the room after a year's absence.

"That showed me," Tim says, "that when something's got inertia, and something's got buy-in, and something's got people that care — it's going to last."

Part of what keeps him returning is what he's seen the community produce. He points to Nick Hill, whose leadership contract was recently extended for four more years, as one example of what Du Quoin sends into the world. He talks about a broader regional view that's replaced the local competitive instincts of his younger years. Jackson County, Williamson, Perry, Franklin — all the surrounding counties have to collaborate, he says, to make the region what it needs to be.

That long view comes from decades of watching investments compound. Not just financial ones.

"When you're younger, you don't appreciate the disciplines that are indoctrinated into you," he says. "As you develop in your life and utilize them, then you start to appreciate them."

He's made it a point not to let that appreciation stay passive. As his children moved through school and then graduated, he watched how easy it becomes to drift away from a community's institutions once your immediate stake in them fades. The foundation gave him a reason to stay connected — to keep showing up, raising money, and sitting in a room watching students receive checks that open doors.

"Seeing the looks on the faces of those recipients year after year," he says. "It's intrinsic, it's extrinsic. It's rewarding."

He told his wife Jill the same thing recently. "It's work, it's effort — but it keeps you connected and caring."

He lands on those two words like he's said them before and means them both.

Connection. Caring.

"That," he says, "is embedded in this district wholeheartedly."