A charitable trust fund established more than 80 years ago by Charlottesville-born financier Paul Goodloe McIntire to support Albemarle County students has been terminated.
For decades, the Albemarle Trust awarded exemplary graduates of Albemarle County high schools with $500 each.
“The Albemarle County Award recognizes and awards $500 to high school graduates at each high school based on their outstanding character and scholarship,” according to the school division’s annual budget. “Allotment per school is awarded based on the schools’ graduating class size.”
But the graduates from Albemarle, Western Albemarle and Monticello high schools who received the Albemarle County Award this past May may have been the last to do so.
Wells Fargo, which served as the fund’s trustee, filed a petition on May 23 in Albemarle County Circuit Court to terminate the trust.
Adhering to state law to provide a 30-day notice of termination, Wells Fargo published an announcement in the July 29 edition of The Daily Progress requesting the court approve the petition pursuant to two sections in Virginia Code. Charitable trusts may be terminated:
“If it determines that the value of the trust property is insufficient to justify the costs of the administration.”And “if the charitable purpose becomes ‘impracticable, impossible to achieve or wasteful.’”
The Daily Progress reached out to San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, but the financial institution did not have an official statement to provide on the matter.
It is common practice across the financial services industry to terminate a trust, and turn over the remaining funds to the beneficiary, if the assets reach a size or level no longer economically sensible to maintain.
“Our understanding is that the court has granted the petition,” Albemarle County Public Schools spokeswoman Jennifer Butler told The Daily Progress.
McIntire started the fund in 1941 with a $50,000 donation — worth roughly $1.1 million in today’s dollars — to the Albemarle County School Board. Butler said there is roughly $210,000 remaining in the account — an amount that will be redistributed to the Albemarle County School Board once the termination is finalized.
The trust is not the only piece of McIntire’s legacy that has faded.
McIntire was born in Charlottesville in 1860. His father was a well-known figure in the city, serving as its mayor during the Civil War.
Though raised in a prominent family, McIntire found fame and fortune for himself after leaving Virginia for the stock exchanges of Chicago and, later, New York City. He returned to his hometown a much wealthier man in 1918 and became a generous benefactor to the city, its schools and other institutions.
A few decades before his contribution to the county school division, McIntire commissioned and gifted the city of Charlottesville three statues, two depicting the Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and a third depicting explorers Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their Lemhi Shoshone guide Sacagawea. All of these monuments, deemed too controversial to keep standing, were removed by the city.
McIntire’s footprint has not been completely erased, by any means. McIntire Road runs through the heart of the city with McIntire Park lying on the north end of the thoroughfare. The recreational area remains in use today and is home to the Brooks Family YMCA, multiple baseball fields, a skate park and walking trails.
In 1921, the businessman gifted the University of Virginia, which he briefly attended before heading to Chicago, with $200,000 for the creation of a school of commerce that continues to bear his name. That same year, he donated another $120,000 for the construction of a Greek-style amphitheater that lies just off of the historic UVa Lawn near Old Cabell Hall.
McIntire ultimately gave the university nearly $750,000 total for capital construction projects, research initiatives and the creation of its departments of music and art.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com