Spring/Summer 1997

The selfless gifts of individuals like Phyllis Moriarty will allow us to reach our goal and also remind us of the continued interest that people have in archaeology and in past civilizations.

DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE
New Endowment Funds
Generous supporters come in all guises
by Richard M. Leventhal
THE INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY's endowment funds have just reached more than $1.7 million. Most of these funds came from traditional sources and from individuals well known to the Institute and the Friends of Archaeology. However, every so often, someone who is not known to the Institute or to the Southern California archaeological community contributes to this endowment or to the Institute. Here is a story about one such donor.
About a year ago, I was handed an envelope containing a photocopy of a handwritten document. This document turned out to be the will of Phyllis U. Moriarty. Within this will, she wrote,

I do hereby give, devise and bequeath my Dean Witter stock and the sale of my mobile home to a Trust for the female students in post-graduate work at the UCLA Archaeology Department. . . There are not any other parties who deserve to benefit by the hard work of Ursula Viola Moriarty (my deceased Mother) or myself, Phyllis Ursula Moriarty...

With this one piece of paper, the Institute gained another endowment of between $100,000 and $170,000 for the benefit of women graduate students in the Archaeology Program. This is an extremely generous gift from an individual completely unknown to the Institute or to UCLA. We have run checks of the donors to UCLA, of past students of UCLA, of the Friends of Archaeology and nothing has turned up which gives us a hint of Phyllis Moriarty's interest in UCLA, The Institute of Archaeology, or even in archaeology.
We continue to try and raise money for the Institute's endowment. Of the proposed $3 million endowment, approximately one-quarter has been set aside for the support of graduate students. The selfless gifts of individuals like Phyllis Moriarty will allow us to reach our goal and also remind us of the continued interest that people have in archaeology and in past civilizations.








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