For 90 years, individuals, families and organizations have established charitable funds through The Dayton Foundation to help them to help others in our community and beyond. The following represent some of their inspiring stories and how they are using the Foundation to enrich the lives of others. We are privileged to serve them and all of our Foundation fund donors.

Wallace and Florence B. Stauffer Fund

Born in 1894, Dayton native Wallace Stauffer grew up and made his life in the community. He was remembered by his friends as a fine, accomplished businessman and good friend. As the owner and president of Snyder and Stauffer, INA Insurance, Wallace Stauffer also was very shy. His shyness, however, didn’t prevent him from becoming an active volunteer with many civic organizations, such as Shawn Acres and the Community Chest. He held many causes close to his heart, especially those involving children. In 1952, he married Florence Beechlor, and they made their home together on Schenck Avenue in Oakwood. Florence Stauffer, a former manicurist at the Van Cleve Hotel barber shop, was a strong supporter of the arts and had a great love of music. Together, they left a sizable estate of $603,000 to The Dayton Foundation, which in 1981 established an unrestricted endowment fund, named the Wallace and Florence B. Stauffer Fund. More than $1.1 million has been awarded in the last 30 years from the Stauffers’ fund to help a variety of charitable organizations and causes in the Greater Dayton Region and will continue to do so for years to come.

Dave and Jane Thomas Fund

Lifelong residents of the Greater Dayton Region and longtime parishioners of College Hill Community Church, Jane and Dave Thomas firmly believed that one of the greatest losses individuals can have is to not reach their full potential. Giving children the help they need to achieve their goals through educational, medical, emotional or religious support, was the Thomases’ dream. As Dave Thomas said numerous times, “We need to be a neighbor to the neighbor next door.” In their honor, their children, David Thomas III and Sue Thomas Thayer, established the Dave and Jane Thomas Fund through The Dayton Foundation. They did it as a Christmas gift in 1999 to their 83-year-old mother, whose health had been declining. Since 2000, more than $11,000 in grants from the fund has been awarded to College Hill Community Church to support programs or initiatives that will encourage youth to become “fulfilled human beings, responsible members of society and children of God.”

James and Jeanne Hochman Foundation

As a young boy, Jim Hochman would ride his bike to the Dayton Art Institute and spend hours marveling at the artwork as he roamed the halls of the museum. Little did he know that his future wife, Jeanne, also would share his love for the arts. In her youth, Jeanne spent Saturday afternoons with her father listening to the Metropolitan Opera and regularly attending symphonies at Severance Center in Cleveland. When they married in 1962, they settled in Dayton and continued to enjoy the city and its many cultural opportunities. To help support Dayton’s arts organizations and other charities close to their heart, they opened a Charitable Checking AccountSM in 1986. In 2007, they converted their account into a donor-advised fund. Through both funds the Hochmans have distributed more than $211,000 to date in grants to local charities. Their endowment fund helps carry out the Hochmans’ desire to help future generations of Daytonians experience the same cultural opportunities they have enjoyed in the community they have called home for so many years.

Wahid Abdullah Memorial Fund

One summer night in 1993, a promising young high school graduate and his dreams came to an end with the sound of a single gunshot. He was murdered by the hand of a fellow youth in an attempted carjacking. Ironically, this slaying echoed the words and fears of the victim, 17-year-old Wahid Abdullah, the eldest son of Muslim immigrants from Africa’s Ivory Coast. While working two jobs and maintaining above-average grades in school, Abdullah remarkably found time to pursue his athletic interest on numerous school sports teams. Shortly before his passing, he had entered and won a local oratorical contest. His speech, titled “A Calling to Youth: Restore the Sacredness of Human Life – Stop the Violence,” called out to African-Americans to end youth violence and regain a sense of religious harmony. To keep his memory alive, Abdullah’s friends and WDTN-TV2 News Reporter Jim Bucher helped to establish the Wahid Abdullah Memorial Fund through the African-American Community Fund of The Dayton Foundation. Since 1997, the fund has awarded $5,500 in scholarships to help Montgomery County high school graduates pursue their education.

Caroline Patterson Shaw Memorial Fund

Born in Dayton to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dun Patterson, Caroline Lowe Patterson spent her early childhood years here before going away to boarding school in Connecticut. After also living in St. Louis for many years, she moved back to Dayton in 1960, when she married George W. Shaw, a retired chairman of the board of City Transit Company and nephew of Julia Shaw Patterson Carnell, a Dayton Foundation foundering donor. A community activist, Caroline was involved in such organizations as the Dayton Art Institute, the Dayton Boys’ Club and The Dayton Foundation. When she died unexpectedly after a short illness in 1986, an unrestricted endowment fund in her name was created at the Foundation through a $20,000 bequest from her estate. Twenty-five years later the fund has distributed almost $20,000, with a market value of $24,000, serving as an example of how an endowment fund – in this case unrestricted – can make significant grants in the donor’s name through time, while preserving the fund’s corpus and the donor’s memory and wishes in perpetuity.

W.W. Owen Memorial Fund

William Wendel Owen, former president of City Transit Company, had a passion for the Dayton community. Though he had no children of his own, Owen organized special youth-oriented events each December, including the Sertoma Club’s Christmas luncheon. Now in its 55th year, the luncheon continues to delight area schoolchildren through the W.W. Owen Memorial Fund of The Dayton Foundation, which was established at his death in 1990. Students join Sertoma Club members at the Engineers Club and perform Christmas programs for their hosts, watch magic shows and visit with Santa Claus. Since 1955, more than 2,000 third-grade students from Dayton Public Schools have been a part of the Christmas program. To date, the fund has awarded more than $65,000 to support this annual event, as well as other activities that continue his charitable interests in youth, public transportation and local history.

Special thanks goes to 90th Anniversary Media Sponsors: Dayton Daily News and WHIO-TV.