Feb. 17, 2026, KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – The Oregon Tech Foundation is announcing a newly established scholarship, the Alexis Lyle Runyan Memorial Endowed Scholarship, to support nursing students from the Klamath Basin who are pursuing their education at Oregon Tech. The initial endowment of $250,000 was provided by the Runyan Family of Portland.
Alexis Lyle Runyan’s family history is closely tied to the medical community in Klamath Falls. One year after Alexis was born in 1910, her parents, Alexander Joseph and Jessie Chilton Lyle, arrived in Klamath Falls and built, owned, and operated the community’s first real hospital, Blackburn Sanitarium.
Alexis, a 1932 graduate of the University of Oregon Business School, was an active volunteer in the community. In 1964, the Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital (now Sky Lakes Medical Center) opened, and a Women’s Volunteer Guild was formed. Alexis helped organize the Guild and was elected the Guild’s first board president that year. Throughout her life, she remained an active and devoted Guild volunteer.
The endowed scholarship honors Alexis and her father Alexander’s legacy while addressing the financial needs of students seeking their nursing degrees. With the need for nursing graduates remaining critical to the community, the goal is for these graduates to continue serving the region where they are needed most.
“In 1911, my father, Alexander J. Lyle, established and built what is commonly credited as the first hospital in Klamath Falls. Growing up amidst ‘hospital talk’ at the dinner table, I quickly picked up the family’s interest in health care. I would accompany my father to the hospital whenever I could. I was intrigued. When my father died in 1928, my mother had to sell the business; however, the interest in health care remained with me. Thirty-six years later, when Eleanor Ehlers invited me to help organize a Guild for the new intercommunity hospital, and later asked me to serve as the Guild’s first president, she told me, ‘Your father would have been proud of you.’ I knew she was right…I said yes, as did hundreds of other Klamath Basin women.” – Alexis Runyan article in a hospital newsletter
To learn more about Oregon Tech scholarships, visit www.oit.edu/oregon-tech-foundation.
