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Gift from estate will expand scholarships, bring distinguished scholars to YSU
By DENISE Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
A $1 million donation from a late professor’s estate will expand scholarships to draw humanities scholars to Youngstown State University.
The donation, announced Wednesday, comes from the estate of David S. and Helga Ives. David, who died in 1991, served as a YSU professor for 31 years. He worked in humanities, Latin, Greek, English, Italian ancient history and western civilization. He retired in 1984.
Helga Ives died last year.
“This will establish a visiting scholars program at YSU and provide enhanced scholarships and fund the YSU English Festival which is really known throughout the world,” Jim Tressel, YSU president, said at a Wednesday morning news conference in DeBartolo Hall at YSU.
This marks the fourth seven-figure YSU donation in the past two months. The YSU Foundation has secured pledges and gifts this year of $20.5 million.
That compares with $13 million last year, $6.2 million in 2013-14 and $7.4 million for 2012-13.
The gift from the Ives estate establishes the David and Helga Ives Distinguished Visiting Humanities Scholar at the university, allowing YSU to bring in distinguished scholars in the humanities to teach and conduct research.
It will rotate among humanities disciplines.
It also expands two existing scholarships: the David and Sandor Ives Award and the David and Helga Ives Humanities Scholarship. The latter was established by Richard Johnson, a former Ives’ student. The gift also creates a new scholarship, the David and Helga Ives Veterans Scholarship. The flagpole in front of YSU’s Veterans Resource Center will be named in honor of Ives, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Force during World War II.
The estate’s donation also will fund the YSU English Festival endowment.
The English Festival is a three-day annual event at YSU for middle school and high school students.
Besides the monetary donation, the estate also donated 5,000 books, including some rare books that will be restored and more than 1,400 albums of classical music to YSU’s Maag Library, military memorabilia to the Veterans Resource Center, memorabilia of YSU and the Iveses’ to the university archives and a century-old tapestry to the office of the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
Mark Makoski, who was Helga Ives’ banker, also considered her a friend. He grew emotional in talking about the couple.
The Iveses met after WWII in Italy. Helga was in medical school when she was taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans. She worked to treat the wounds of German soldiers.
David Ives served as an intelligence officer.
Helga appointed Makoski and Scott Schulick, a former YSU trustee who was Helga’s financial adviser, as co-trustees of her estate.
The couple had a son, Sandor, who is deceased.
Schulick said he met Helga four years ago when she was 90. The two became friends, and he spent a lot of time with talking about books, current events, history and other things.
“She challenged and she wanted to be challenged,” Schulick said. “She always wanted to know what you were reading.”
Helga read several books per week, he said.