Steven Newcomb, a senior at Lee-Davis High School in Mechanicsville, is this year's recipient of the $1,000 Willard G. Plentl Sr. Scholarship, the Virginia Department of Aviation has announced.

Newcomb, who has enrolled in Averett University's flight operations program, wants to become a commercial pilot.

"Flying city to city inside the United States or across oceans to foreign countries would bring continuous satisfaction to me," Newcomb wrote in his scholarship application essay.

The Willard G. Plentl Sr. Scholarship is named in honor of Willard G. Plentl Sr., a military combat pilot veteran and former director of Aeronautics for the commonwealth of Virginia.

Plentl retired from the Virginia Department of Aviation in 1984; he was elected to the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame that same year.

This scholarship is awarded to a Virginia high-school senior with at least a 3.5 unweighted grade-point average who plans an aviation career in a non-engineering area and has been accepted into a non-engineering, aviation-related post-secondary education program.