Former teacher endows $3.4 million to York foundation
Doris Schwartz, who died three years ago, left an endowment totaling $3.4 million to the York County Community Foundation. (Photo: Submitted)
(York) — She was a teacher. Later, she became a world traveler as a flight attendant. Now, three years after her death, Doris Schwartz can add one more thing to her life accomplishments.
Schwartz, who was 93 when she died in 2013, endowed $3.4 million to the York County Community Foundation, creating a fund in her name that will help teachers and students.
The idea for the fund was brought up to her by her attorney, John Stitt, along with estate executors, said Bryan Tate, vice president and chief development officer with the foundation.
It is the single largest field of interest fund estate gift the foundation has ever received, Tate said.
A field of interest fund means one that goes to a specific issue like the environment, or education, as opposed to a designated fund that would go toward one nonprofit each year.
“To apply her own personal education to create a legacy that lives forever for others…what a grand and exciting way to be remembered,” Tate said.
The foundation released information about the Doris E. Schwartz Education Fund on Tuesday. Tate said that her intentions were so grand, the foundation wanted to make sure all of her goals were met.
Schwartz’s fund recently made its first grant to the Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12 to help create an innovation lab, a news release states.
That grant will go to the school in the amount of $100,000 for the next two years.
The idea is to create a forum for teachers and students across the county’s 16 public school districts to come up with creative ways of learning. It would cut across the district’s geographical locations.
“Now there is an opportunity to think about how they might deliver education in innovative ways that may not have to limit education within those geographical boundaries,” Tate said.
Schwartz’s fund is invested with the foundation, meaning it will grow each year and always exist. Annually, the foundation board’s spending policy is 4.5 percent, an amount that would get carved out of the fund and awarded for grants, Tate said.
“In this case, Doris’s intentions will forever be carried out,” he said.
According to her obituary, Schwartz retired from American Airlines as a flight attendant. She was born in York County on September 5, 1919.
This story is part of a partnership between WITF and the York Daily Record.
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