Anniversary Gift Celebrates 60 Years, Funds the Future

After 59 years of marriage, Ken ’54 and Anne MacDonald Sherman ’53 had amassed quite a collection of anniversary gifts. In fact, in recent years they requested friends and family to donate to a favorite charity as a gift to them.

Last year for their 60th anniversary, those friends and family did them one better and got them a legacy: A SUNY Oswego scholarship to call their own.

“I can’t tell you how surprised we were about the scholarship,” Anne said. “It never occurred to us that we could do something like this.”

Everyone from their closest family members to neighborhood “kids” they’ve known for decades chipped in to endow the fund. The annual award will go to an education major.

Both Anne and Ken spent their careers as teachers, retiring in the 1980s.

“Our whole lives changed because we were fortunate enough to get a college education,” Anne said. Both she and Ken were the first in their families to go to college.

“I think [our family] knew how much Oswego meant to us,” Anne said. “We had very happy years there.”

The Shermans were married while they were students and took up their first residence in Splinter Village. When they graduated, demand for teachers was high and both Anne and Ken made a satisfying career and earned a comfortable retirement from it.

They will continue to contribute to the endowment, said Anne. The first Sherman Scholarship will be awarded for the 2012-13 academic year and the endowed

fund will continue in perpetuity.

“The scholarship is something that will go on when we’re gone and hopefully give someone else the chance to have the experience we had,” she said.

For information on establishing a scholarship, visit oswego.edu/giving/scholarships or write to scholar@oswego.edu.

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