Virginia Slusser:创造不同

没有多少人能活过他们的人寿保险单. At 100 years old, CUI donor Virginia Hoffman Slusser just did.

“At 100, it expires,她说。 with incredulity from her Burbank home. “我不知道保险单会过期!”

Virginia continued to drive her car and manage her own rental property in Newport Beach until a few months ago. 约翰·F·肯尼迪遇刺时，她46岁. Kennedy was shot; 51 when man first walked on the moon; and 63 when Ronald Reagan was first elected. 她几乎没有放慢脚步的迹象.

“When people say something like, ‘It was 1960 when that happened. 那是很久以前的事了.她说:“对我来说，最近已经很接近了。. “六七十年代是一段美好的时光.”

Virginia recently made a generous donation to 肯考迪娅 Irvine of a triplex rental property she and her husband Gerry built in Corona Del Mar in 1969.

Virginia’s gift will have a tremendous impact on our students for many years.

“Gerry and I used to have lots of fun driving down to Corona Del Mar w在这里 we had a little apartment t在这里 to stay overnight, 出去吃顿丰盛的晚餐，去海边玩,弗吉尼亚说. “太棒了。.”

她从她的牧师那里听说了崔. 伯班克第一路德教会的迈克·哈纳克. Virginia visited the campus for a tour and to enjoy the Christmas concert. “我的眼睛都跳出来了，”她说. “I thought, this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen to go to school.”

蒂姆Jaeger, 负责大学晋升的执行副总裁, and others worked with her to create a charitable living trust.

“她将自己的一些资产用于创作, 对我们的学生产生重大影响的好方法, 使命与事工,耶格尔说。

Through it all, Virginia is thankful for her many blessings. She is grateful that she became aware of 肯考迪娅 and is thrilled that her gift will benefit students for years to come.

The living trust “was just wonderful because now I don’t have to worry about rentals and maintenance and all that,弗吉尼亚说. “That I could afford to give this building to the university is quite an accomplishment in my life.”

Saving up to buy real estate turned out to be “the smartest thing” she and Gerry did on the financial side, and when Virginia decided to donate her rental property to CUI, 收益被存入一个生前信托. “It’s worked out so well that I would have done it sooner,她说。.

“Virginia’s gift will have a tremendous impact on our students for many years,” Jaeger says. "That I could afford to give this building to the university is quite an accomplishment in my life."

弗吉尼亚的路德教会根基深厚. Her grandparents worked as a cook and custodian at 肯考迪娅 Seminary in St. 19世纪的路易. Because they lived on the property, Virginia’s father was born on the seminary campus itself in 1886.

1917年9月3日，维吉尼亚出生在圣. 路易. 从她出生的年龄来看:
— The United States, under President Woodrow Wilson, had just entered World War One. — The Bolshevik revolution in Russia had not yet occurred. -商业电台不存在. — Arizona and New Mexico had just been admitted to the Union. — Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son was the chairman of the board of the Pullman railway car company.

When Virginia was an infant, her parents decided in the spring of 1918 to go homesteading in Montana.

“My mother must have been out of her mind to try to bring a six-month-old baby across country, but they did that” in what Virginia believes was a Franklin automobile, 她说. 但首先，他们从圣. 路易 to Los Angeles to visit relatives—a journey that took two and a half months.

“Cars those days didn’t go over 35 miles per hour,” Virginia recalls.

一次在加州, 她的母亲拒绝离开, 于是全家在洛杉矶和她父亲定居下来, 训练有素的珠宝商, 在珠宝制造业找了份工作. 你ng Virginia and her older sister played with paper dolls and jacks. 他们乘坐一辆红色的大有轨电车去了杂货店.

“When I talk about street cars, I think, w在这里 did street cars go?弗吉尼亚说.

The family moved to five acres in Roscoe (now called Sun Valley), 她父亲在那里建造了一座至今仍屹立不倒的房子, 开了一个养鸡场. Virginia loved to knit, crochet, and do beading and handwork of all kinds.

“My father being a jeweler, I guess I got a little of his talent,她说。.

当然，他们没有电话、电视或收音机.

“I have lived through a lot of new devices and new things in life, 但是电子产品和我现在根本处不来,她说。, quipping: “I read in the paper yesterday that 58 percent of the people are on 脸谱网. 42%的人没有自己的生活.”

发现附近没有路德教会, her father helped found First Lutheran Church of Burbank when Virginia was around eight years old. When the interim minister was unavailable to preach, her father would read the sermon.

“He was such a good Christian that he would do anything,她说。.

In 1938, at age 21, Virginia was hired by Lockheed, a small company in Burbank. 在那里她遇到了一个年轻的铆工, Gerry Slusser, who worked on airplanes for Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes. Virginia and Gerry married in 1941 when the company was churning out airplanes for the war.

“这一切都是出于安全考虑而伪装起来的,她说。 of the facility which is now part of the Burbank airport.

她的生活并非一帆风顺. Virginia and Gerry had one son, Ron, whom they lost in an automobile accident. 罗恩是喷气推进实验室的物理学家.

“I think the greatest joy of my life was my son being so intelligent and such a kind young man,她说。. “Ron’s last job was to take messages from all the unmanned space crafts and get them to talk to each other. 这就是他们所说的“进步”吗??”

更糟糕的是，六个月后，格里去世了. 他们结婚68年了.

“我经历了两年非常艰难的时期，”弗吉尼亚说. “你 just ask for guidance from the good Lord because I had no relatives to help me.”

As for advice on living longer, Virginia says simply, “I eat what I want to. I have hot fudge sundaes once in a while, and I love chocolate. 我不限制饮食.”

Through it all, Virginia is thankful for her many blessings. She is grateful that she became aware of 肯考迪娅 and is thrilled that her gift will benefit students for years to come.