A Glimpse in their Lives
1993 Honorees
In the early 1930's, 18-year old Edna "Bonny" Russell would drive daily between San Jose, where she lived with her family, and Stanford University, where she was pursuing a degree in economics. Along the way, she would pass the Santa Clara County Poor Farm and give a friendly wave to the haggard-looking senior citizens who would gather by the gate to wave at passing cars.
The seemingly sad plight of these institutionalized seniors deeply affected Russell. So much, in fact, that she spent her last year at Stanford studying the care of the aged, even though, at the time, the word "gerontology" was barely in the nation's lexicon. She went on, after marrying and raising three children, to become one of the first women in the country to receive a Ph.D in gerontology. From there, she founded the Peninsula Volunteers' Little House, one of the country's first senior activity centers; served 16 years on the California Commission on Aging and later was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Federal Council on Aging. |
David Packard may have a little bit more to give than the average person, but there's no denying his generosity has been astounding. The 80-year-old co-founder, with college buddy William Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard Corp., Packard has given almost unparalleled sums of money in philanthropy. It's so much, in fact, that no one seems to have added it all together.
"I think they are two of the world's greatest philanthropists," said David Glen, director of principle gifts for Stanford University. He and his late wife, Lucile Salter Packard, have been Stanford's largest donors since Leland Stanford started the university in 1891. Of the $100 million he has given (which is significantly underestimating the money's true value since these are not given (which is significantly underestimating the money's true value since these are not |
Alf Brandin began his career at Stanford as a hard-nosed football player and went on to play a major role in the development of the university's lands, including the Stanford Shopping Center and Stanford Research Park.
As a young Stanford student in the 1930s, Brandin was a member of the historic "Vow Boys" football tema which vowed never to lose to USC while they were at Stanford, and never did. |
"I had never in my life thought about the medicine. It truly had never entered my mind," said Dr. William Clark, recalling how he had been lying on the beach at Searsville Lake in what is now the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve when he made the decision.
"Just like that, I snapped my fingers, and I said, 'Jean, next week I'm going to switch to pre-med.' No more to it than that." Clark has been an engineering major at UC Berkeley, but by his fourth semester, he realized he couldn't understand advanced math and decided to find another interest. He transferred to Stanford University where he finished his medical degree. "It was the people part that came to surface. I've always been pretty gregarious," he said. One of the favorite aspects of his job was making house calls, an essential part of his practice at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, which he joined in 1947. Oral antibiotics hadn't come out, so doctors had to give |
Jean Bacigalupi is so modest and self-effacing she still wonders why she was honored with a Lifetimes of Achievement Award when Palo Alto has such a wealth of volunteers. "It must be because I am old enough," she said. "You have to be at least 70."
Yet one look at Bacigaluni's life makes it clear why she was chosen from among the well-credentialed pack. For 40 years, Bacigalupi has volunteered- and volunteered, and volunteered. She started during World War II, as a volunteer with the blood bank, then added the GirlsScouts, |
Mary Wilbur recalls with the amusement arriving home after the opening day of the Stanford Hospital Auxiliary gift shop in 1959. She remembers beaming with pride as her son quizzed her about the shop she was instrumental in creating after the hospital's move from San Francisco that year.
"I was so pleased we had taken in several hundred dollars" on that first day, Wilbur said, as she asked gently that the story not be told. But, her son, then a graduate student at Stanford, asked skeptically how much for that income she had to pay to her workers and how much rent she was paying for the shop. She told him the shop was staffed by volunteers and that the hospital have the space free to auxiliary. "I hardly see how you could fail," he said flatly. |