Billy Bean while Linda was pregnant, but separated when Billy was six months old. Linda married Ed Kovac, a police officer, and they had five children together. Bean attended Santa Ana High School, and won a state championship with the school's baseball team. He enrolled at Loyola Marymount University on an athletic scholarship to play college baseball for the Loyola Marymount Lions. After his junior year, the New York Yankees selected Bean in the 24th round of the 1985 MLB Draft. Though the Yankees offered Bean a $55,000 signing bonus, Bean followed through with his promise to return to Loyola Marymount for
HOPE Scholarship of the HOPE Scholarship. June 29, 1998: The Council on School Performance releases a study that concludes: "We found that recipients of Georgia's HOPE Scholarship are more likely to remain enrolled in college, have higher college grade point averages and have earned more credit hours than students without the scholarship." September 1, 1998: Five years after its inception, the HOPE Scholarship has awarded 319,000 students more than $580 million. November 3, 1998: Georgia voters elect to create a Constitutional amendment protecting the HOPE Scholarship Program from legislative and political tampering. May 17, 1999: For the second year in a row,