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Life Stories Live on Through the Work of The Community Foundation
Dan Berry
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull (left), alongside his wife, Rose Frances, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his role in establishing the United Nations.
We do what we promise we’ll do.
That’s at the heart of the hundreds and hundreds of philanthropic funds established at The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee through the years.
Many donors who find their way to The Community Foundation to connect generosity with need do so in order to leave a legacy for themselves or for family members. This can be done through the different types of funds offered by community foundations.
For instance, philanthropists can establish their giving mechanism to come to fruition now, or plan for future giving upon their death. In both instances, donors’ stories can live on, and their support for the community can continue generation after generation.
This is like others who, having heard of CFMT through word of mouth or other ways, will relax as other friends express their own goals and success in getting done just what they wanted.
Planned giving counts for many such funds, and they can come in many shapes and sizes. The beauty lies in this: It’s relatively easy to create a fund and to take the time to ensure it achieves the charitable goals close to the donor’s heart.
Dedicated members of our Donor Services team work with donors, attorneys, trust officers, and other financial advisors to tailor a giving vehicle to best suit the donors’ needs. Donors’ charitable goals may be realized with several giving options: estate planning, wills, IRAs and life insurance are a few examples. Legacy gifts often reflect support for organizations or issues in which the donor has had a long and meaningful history, while at the same time taking care of existing family members. An example of planned giving through estate planning is the Dan and Mimi Berry Fund.
Its genesis dates years ago to when Dan Berry was still alive, but the planned gift eventually was established as a Designated Fund in 2017 upon the death of Berry’s last direct heir.
Some background: Dan McIntyre Berry Jr. was the longtime head of the Nashville branch of the Better Business Bureau. He passed away in 2013 at age 87 and was preceded in death by his wife, Mimi, and their son, the Rev. Dan Berry III.
The elder Berry was brought to the city with the charge of ridding a growing Nashville business community of scammers and swindlers. “We intend to create a better climate for the legitimate business operations here,” Berry was quoted in the Sept. 21, 1961, edition of The Tennessean after speaking at a luncheon meeting at the Hermitage Hotel not long after being named BBB chief.
(Interestingly, Berry’s first board president was Nelson Andrews, then an executive at McClure’s Department Stores and later a key supporter and board chair of The Community Foundation.)
Small wonder that a by-the-book businessman such as Dan Berry had very specific ideas about where his money should go after his death.
So one day, in late 2007, Berry worked with The Foundation to create a document. It began:
After Berry’s heirs passed away, the remainder of the trust was to be added to the Dan and Mimi Berry Fund, which benefits six organizations:
• Hillwood Presbyterian Church in Nashville, where Dan was the longtime choir director; • Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville; • The Salvation Army – Nashville Area Command; • American Red Cross of Nashville Area; • Fannie Battle Day Home for Children in Nashville; • American Foundation for the Blind in New York City.
These organizations now receive gifts each year from the Dan and Mimi Berry Fund — a lasting legacy indeed.
Another example of setting up a fund that The Foundation honors in perpetuity comes from the late Elias Skovron, who established two Designated Funds at The Community Foundation.
The story of Elias Skovron is amazing in and of itself.
Up until the time of his death in January 2007 at age 92, Skovron remained eternally grateful. Grateful to all those who helped arrange his departure as a man of Jewish descent from his native Poland in the summer of 1938 — mere months before Nazi Germany invaded his homeland and World War II began. And grateful to those who helped him once he emigrated to America with the help of his great-uncle Dave Bogatsky and wife Lillian, who lived in Nashville.
They helped save his life, after all.
Skovron, then age 24, had met his relatives more than a decade earlier when they visited Poland. Early in 1938, he wrote to them asking for their help in fleeing the country.
Lillian “Aunt Lil” Bogatsky wrote back to inform that her husband had died, but that she would agree to help the great-nephew’s cause.
Aunt Lil then petitioned U.S. District Judge John Gore, a family friend, for help. The judge, in turn, reached out to his friend and former law partner Cordell Hull, then U.S. Secretary of State under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Hull, born in a log cabin in Pickett County, Tennessee, and the longest-serving Secretary of State in history, subsequently wrote to the American Ambassador in Poland asking that Skovron receive a visa. It was granted immediately, one of just 250 visas granted that year.
Elias left the country in the nick of time. Besides himself and a brother, who emigrated to France to escape the war, the rest of the Skovron family perished.
The Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum, located near Byrdstown, Tennessee, north of Cookeville, includes a representation of Hull’s log cabin birthplace and period gardens.
The Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum, located near Byrdstown, Tennessee, north of Cookeville, includes a representation of Hull’s log cabin birthplace and period gardens.
All told, the Polish government estimates nearly 6 million citizens — more than 3 million of them of Jewish descent — died at the hands of the occupying Nazi Germany and Allied Soviet Union forces in World War II.
Skip forward several decades.
In 2004, now a U.S. Citizen, U.S. Army veteran and having enjoyed a long life and successful business career in Nashville as a furrier, Elias Skovron visited The Community Foundation one day to set up a pair of Designated Funds to honor those who helped save his life.
One is the Elias Skovron Fund Designated to Benefit Jackson County Historical Society and the Memory of Judge John Gore.
The other is the Elias Skovron Fund Designated to Benefit the Cordell Hull Museum and the Friends of Cordell Hull in Byrdstown, about 100 miles east of Nashville in Pickett County.
Thanks to these gifts, each year these organizations receive noteworthy gifts to carry on the legacy of Elias Skovron, a man forever grateful.
