Chris Jepson: Eydth Bush Charitable Foundation achieves $100M benchmark

On Sept. 13, a public ceremony was held on the lawn of Rollins College. About 100 community leaders and citizens were on hand to recognize a $1 million gift from the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation in support of the renovation of the Archibald Granville Bush Science Center.

The Edyth Bush Foundation is about creating ripples, and we must go back to 1973 to appreciate how its first ripple was cast to understand the cascading affect of that initial act of vision (kindness).

The Edyth Bush Foundation is named after its benefactress. An accomplished woman in her own right, she married Archibald G. Bush in 1922. Mr. Bush was there at the beginning of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (now 3M), amassing a $300 million fortune before his death in 1966. Mr. and Mrs. Bush had, over the years, wintered in Winter Park and had become increasingly involved in the community with Mr. Bush serving on the board of directors of Rollins College. Upon her husband’s death, Edyth moved from St. Paul, Minn., making Winter Park her permanent residence.

Edyth Bush died in 1972, and a year later, her vision came into being with the establishment of the foundation bearing her name. Its mission today reads, “Creating innovative civic solutions helping people help themselves.” The Foundation was her baby, so to speak — her inspired creation. It was observed on more than one occasion that she considered the foundation the “child that she and Archie never had.”

All of us (our lives and actions) to varying degrees are as stones cast in a pond (a sea, an ocean). The ripples we create flow outward and onward influencing events and lives far beyond our ability of ever knowing their impact. Except with Edyth Bush. We can very discernibly determine what one woman of vision created through her foundation, and how she still influences our lives today.

A benchmark was achieved Sept. 13. Under the shade of campus trees, with the September heat and humidity relentlessly bearing down, a smiling David Odahowski, president of the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation, proudly announced that the $1 million gift to Rollins College represented a threshold surpassed. Since 1973, the foundation has awarded $100 million in grants, primarily to Central Florida charities. The foundation has cast forth stones, the known — and unknown — impact rippling forth for generations to come.

The foundation is highly supportive of the strengthening of Central Florida’s non-profit community. It has provided millions of dollars in support of the education and empowerment of local non-profit staffs and their volunteer boards of directors. The foundation — with accountability foremost — directly, measurably and significantly fosters citizenship, community and service.

Robert Kennedy observed, “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”

Edyth Bush was such a human being, yet her ripples of hope are anything but tiny.

Congratulations to Winter Park’s Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation on the benchmark you’ve achieved. Keep casting the stones. Keep creating the ripples. Just as Edyth Bush envisioned.