A Shared Legacy — Percentage of Estate

Mary E. Van Gorden M-D'51

I am a 1951 graduate of Milwaukee-Downer College. My cousin Marjorie Freund was a 1935 graduate of Lawrence College. We shared family history and DNA, but we also shared similar educational backgrounds. Marjorie attended Lawrence and then Columbia University, while I attended Downer and then New York University.

I visited with Marjorie in Washington when she worked for the CIA, and we compared notes about our early college days. We recognized that the experiences we had at those two liberal arts institutions were comparable and strongly agreed that they were major (positive) forces in directing our lives.

I had chosen Downer because it had one of the finest occupational therapy programs in the world. I was well trained, technically, but I also came away "well nourished" in the liberal arts. I learned not only how to do but how to be.

I credit those Downer days with making it possible for me to succeed as an occupational therapist and as the longtime Executive Director of the Polinsky Medical Rehabilitation Center in Duluth, MN.

That broad education continues, even today, to influence my life as a volunteer and community activist. After Marjorie passed away in 2000, her great appreciation for Lawrence was made evident with a bequest establishing the Marjorie M. Freund endowed Scholarship Fund. Like Marjorie, I want to help perpetuate the liberal arts tradition and am happy to include in my will a provision leaving a percentage of my estate to Lawrence University, as a member of the Lawrence-Downer Legacy Circle. In honor of this coming summer's consolidation celebration, won't you join me?