New Scholarship Lets Tommy Horvatic Live Forever

It's scholarship application season at the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. This year the Hampton Roads Community Foundation is delighted to offer eight new scholarship funds to help students from southeastern Virginia attend college. Here is the story of one of our newest funds:

 

Rita Horvatic couldn't let her only son die.That's why the Virginia Beach, Virginia mother and her late husband Tom started

Anne Horvatic Chrisite & Rita Horvatic love to share Tommy's story.

giving scholarships in 1987. That was the year their only son Tommy -- the baby in their family of six -- would have graduated from Princess Anne High School.

After a 1986 car accident at the start of Tommy's senior year took his life, his family started collecting and recycling aluminum to earn money for scholarships in Tommy's name. Since 1987 the Horvatics have given $25,000 on their own to 25 Princess Anne graduates going on to college.

 In 2013 Tommy's mom made sure her son's legacy will continue forever.

Tommy Horvatic in 1986.

She donated $100,000 to create the permanent Tommy Horvatic Memorial Scholarship Fund at the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.

Much of her charitable donation came from money earned by recycling aluminum.

Please take three minutes out of your busy day to let Rita Horvatic of Virginia Beach and her daughter Anne Horvatic Christie of Norfolk tell you in this video about Tommy and his scholarship legacy.

The new Tommy Horvatic Memorial Scholarship Fund is among more than 70 endowed scholarship funds administered by the community foundation. In 2013, 358 students are in college with help from $1 million in scholarships donated by people from all walks of life.
 

Applications are now available for the Horvatic Scholarship and the many others available for 2014-15. Scholarships were created by generous donors from all walks of life -- primarily for students from southeastern Virginia. The deadline to apply for most scholarships is February 28, 2014. Learn more.

Thank You, Clarence Robertson!

 

In 2013 we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the creation of the Clarence B. Robertson

Clarence Robertson Photo courtesy of Hampden-Sydney College

Fund and all the good works it underpins at countless nonprofits in southeastern Virginia -- from the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia to St. Mary's Home and Lynnhaven River NOW.

Many people may not remember Clarence Robertson, the Norfolk, Virginia business and civic leader who died in 1965 at age 73. But, we do. Today we thank him for exemplifying the optimistic spirit of the more than 400 fundholders at the Hampton Roads Community Foundation:

Clarence Robertson knew his community would have future needs; he just couldn't predict exactly what they would be.

 That is why Robertson, president of Norfolk's Robertson Investment Corp. and Robertson Chemical Co., chose to create an unrestricted fund at his community foundation. This permanent charitable fund lives on long after Robertson and his companies. It is forever providing grants to an array of good causes in his home region through the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.

Robertson was a World War I veteran who led boards for the United Communities Fund, Bonney Home for Girls, Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Norfolk General Hospital and the Central YMCA. He was a First Presbyterian Church elder who served on the board of Hampden-Sydney College, his alma mater. He saw many changes in his years as a community volunteer, and he witnessed the powerful ways philanthropy gives others better lives.

In 1968, Robertson's generous $42,000 estate gift to the community foundation established a permanent unrestricted fund in his name. Through the power of endowment, the Robertson Fund has provided more than $215,000 in grants over the decades to dozens of area nonprofits. With a value today of $170,737, the Robertson Fund is poised to do good in Hampton Roads for generations to come.
Robertson inspired his cousin, Lelia E. Robertson of Norfolk to start two new unrestricted funds at the community foundation. She was a former Norfolk YWCA board president who created one fund in 1973 in memory of her late father Walter H. Robertson. He founded the Robertson Chemical fertilizer company that Clarence later led. After Lelia died in 1979, her estate gift created a second charitable fund -- the Lelia E. Robertson Fund.

All three Robertson funds have grown while continuing to help Hampton Roads citizens thrive. For that we say thank you.

Rebekah Huber Enriches the Arts in Hampton Roads

The late Rebekah Huber liked to say that because her Norfolk, Virginia family's money "came from the community, we felt like we should give back to the community."

She made good on that promise in 1985 when

Rebekah Huber

she donated more than $2.5 million to the Hampton Roads Community Foundation to create the Paul S. Huber Memorial Fund, named for her late father. He had been president of Norfolk Newspapers, a predecessor to today's Virginian-Pilot and its parent company Landmark Media Enterprises.

 

In the mid-1980s area civic leaders were searching for a way to provide ongoing operating support for the arts in South Hampton Roads. The Huber Fund with its specialized interest in supporting a united arts fund provided the impetus in 1987 to start the Business Consortium for Arts Support.

Paul Huber

Today 27 businesses and foundations donate to the business consortium, which shares office space with the community foundation. Among the annual funders are the community foundation's Huber Fund and seven other field-of-interest funds dedicated to the arts. This month those funds provided a $446,000 grant so the business consortium can help area arts and cultural groups in the coming year.

Since 1987 the business consortium has awarded $18.5 million in grants to more than 45 different cultural arts organizations. More than $5.8 million of that amount has come from the Huber Fund.

This year 32 arts groups in South Hampton Roads received business consortium grants. They include the Virginia Symphony, the Suffolk Art League and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. Those organizations and others in turn provide 1,000 full- and part-time jobs for area citizens -- ranging from set designers and curators to musicians, actors and dancers. 

"General operating support is the hardest kind of money for a nonprofit to raise," says William Hennessey, executive director of the Chrysler Museum of Art, which receives consortium funds. "That's exactly what the business consortium provides."

"The fact that leading businesses contribute to the consortium sends a wonderfully positive message that what's good for the arts community is good for business," Hennessey adds.

We think that is a sentiment that would please Rebekah Huber, who loved going to classical music concerts and the theater. She died in 2007 at age 92 leaving her own named fund to the community foundation.

The $2.5 million endowed fund Rebekah Huber started in 1987 to honor her dad has already given out more than $5.8 million. Through investment growth her fund is now valued at more than $5 million.

That means Rebekah and Paul Huber will be supporting the arts in their home community forever.