Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 6, 1993 TAG: 9301060300
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE LEGACY OF MARION VIA
WHEN Marion Bradley Via inherited her share of the fortune built by Henry Bradley, her adoptive father and founder of the Allen-Bradley Co. of Milwaukee, she could have blown the money on high-risk financial fliers.Or squandered her money, an estimated $400 million, on conspicuous consumption.
Or used it to gain entree into the tony society circles of Washington or New York. She could have given away her money to the New York City Ballet and the like - or, for that matter, moved to New York.
Via, who died this week at 75, did none of those things. Instead, she became a philanthropist whose benefactions - from $10 million to $20 million each year - to local nonprofit arts, education and social-service organizations contributed mightily, albeit quietly, to the quality of life in the place she called home, the Roanoke Valley and Western Virginia.
Examples of her more prominent gifts: to the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, the Bradley Free Clinic, Virginia Tech and the Roanoke Valley Horse Show. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of beneficiaries of her generosity, it does indicate the breadth of the organizations with whom she shared her wealth.
It is an instructive list, too, about what charitable dollars can do when wisely placed.
Via's support - including her underwriting of the salary of its first, and still, full-time musical director, Victoria Bond - has enabled the orchestra to achieve a quality rare for a city of Roanoke's size; indeed, to develop into one of the top small-city symphonies in the country.
Because of Via's million-dollar gift, the Free Clinic could buy and renovate a modern medical-arts building, and now serves as a national model for volunteer medical care for the indigent.
A $10 million gift to Tech's College of Engineering has helped keep the university's engineering program among the nation's elite; another gift, of $3 million, enabled Tech to establish the Harvey W. Peters Research Center for the study of Parkinson's disease.
Via's funding of the Roanoke Valley Horse Show has made it a nationally prominent event; this year, its Grand Prix event will have the largest purse for a Grand Prix in the United States.
All this not only helped make life in the Roanoke Valley more rewarding. It also helped give Roanoke a measure of prominence in the outside world.
Via did not seek such prominence for herself. On the contrary. At first, she sought complete anonymity in her gift-giving, a naive hope: In a place of Roanoke's size, the spreading of that much money draws notice. Later, she relented, and agreed to name some of her gifts in honor of family and friends.
Nevertheless, she managed to maintain a remarkably low profile given the circumstances, and she intensely protected her privacy. Few Roanokers, for example, probably would have recognized her if they met her on the street. Leaders of the organizations that benefited from Via's gifts probably have regretted that they could not show their gratitude in more public ways. She wouldn't let them.
With her death, of course, they are freed from any vows of silence about Marion Via. Perhaps with such freedom, one lesson of her life can be spread more widely: the importance in any community of its nonprofit sector, and the vital need for the presence locally of the means and community commitment to support it.
Via possessed both means and commitment, in extraordinary measure. But she would have agreed, we're sure, that the quality of life here - including rich arts and cultural offerings and compassion for the impoverished and elderly and disabled - cannot depend or survive only on the gifts of a few wealthy benefactors.
The main and enduring source of support for quality of life must be the community at large - the countless volunteers, United Way donors, concert-ticket buyers and all the others who make their livings here. And who care about what happens here, as Via did.
Memo: CORRECTION