Donor Spotlight: Leading by Example

MARCIA BEER

Marcia Beer was born in Birmingham, Alabama as the only child of hardworking parents. They were not able to pay for Marcia’s college education, so she worked five jobs to put herself through college. She began work as a clerk in a small stock brokerage firm and eventually became the first female Licensed Registered Principal in Alabama. She retired as an Executive Vice President of a major bank in the New Orleans area.

Marcia and her late husband Billy have always believed that the best students should have the best opportunities. It was Billy’s idea to set up a scholarship fund. In 1956, he was just 25 when he arrived at Charity Hospital/LSU in the acute stage of polio. The excellent treatment Billy received there inspired him and Marcia to name the LSU Health Foundation as a beneficiary of their estate, establishing the Marcia and Billy Beer Endowed Scholarship Fund to support four-year scholarships to the School of Medicine. The scholarships come with one request: that upon beginning medical practice, each recipient repay this gift by offering one free day of medical care each month for those patients unable to afford it.

Marcia has started making those awards by using her RMDs (required minimum distributions) from her IRAs to fund their annual scholarships, affording these students the opportunity to pursue their dream and pave their path in making a difference, much like Marcia has. She says, “I am very proud that my career has allowed me to be able to blaze a trail for others to [endow 4-yr. scholarships]. I would love to know that someone could read our story and then say, ‘Well, I could do that too.’”