(Ray’s Note: As I talk about my friends and their extraordinary gifts, I’ll be using names that I think fit them, but these are not their real names)

Moira

Moira Black was a pretty amazing lady. Living on her own into her 90’s in South Florida, she was fond of going out to eat, loved to discuss great books and poetry, and had outlived two influential and doting husbands. The first a physician, well loved in the community, and who had the vision to start the first primary care clinic regionally, and then the health center at a local college. The second had been the CEO of an influential institution, and had gone on to international renown as a scholar. She insisted that I not call her Mrs. Black, but Moira, because she liked the sound of her name (pronounced like someone from Boston might say, “Mirror”).

Now, Moira was considering a gift that would be transformational in it both its size and scope. She was poised and ready, she had decided which assets to use, and she was enthusiastic about what her gift would do.

And yet the days turned into weeks and the weeks to months as she avoided making a final transfer of the funds.

I called her up and said, “Moira, imagine this! I have to be in South Florida next week. Could I stop by and take you to dinner?” She was thrilled to have company….so I booked my trip.

After a wonderful meal on a day that had to be the hottest August day in the history of South Florida (I was a wilted mess, my suit crumpled, sweat on my brow, and exhausted. Moira was prim, beautiful, and seemed totally unbothered by the heat) – I drove Moira back to her gated community and we retreated (thankfully!) to the air-conditioned comfort of her decidedly Adirondack style apartment.

Some small talk and a couple of cups of coffee later, I asked her very directly about the gift she was planning to make. “Moira, I know you want to do this. The fund you are establishing will help young women at our college for years to come. You’ve discussed this with your family and your financial advisers. May I ask what’s troubling you?”

What she told me changed the way I think about money forever.

“You know,” she said, “all my life I was well cared for. Both of my husbands were generous, and I wanted for nothing. And they were generous to the community, too, and often gave gifts that were from us as a couple. But…well…it was always their money. They made it. They invested it. They gave it away.”

She paused for a very long time. She was smiling, and she was teary – clearly these were not unpleasant memories. When she spoke again she looked right into my eyes.

“This time it’s my money, Ray. I took my own money and invested it, and I watched it grow over the years. I was prudent, but not too conservative – and I called the shots. This endowment fund is what I want to do, but it is hard to let go of something that feels so personal, so much a part of who I am, and maybe the only thing I actually did all on my own in my adult life.”

As I drove to my hotel that evening, and all the way home on the flight the next day, I kept replaying what she had said to me, and reflecting on how it was changing my concept of money, and in particular how this interaction with Moira was so very different from any I had ever had with a man considering a gift.

The next day, in the parking lot at the local department store, her financial adviser called me on my cell phone. We made the arrangements for the transfer, and to this day young women are benefitting – and will benefit long after I am gone – thanks to Moira’s generosity.

Moira passed recently and the entire story leapt once again into my brain. Hers was a generosity not only of dollars, and spirit – it was a gift of her very essence, a gift almost beyond measure. How grateful I am to have been part of it.