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Shorty and Elba Navarro donate $1 million to YSU
By DENISE Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
A Boardman couple’s $1 million gift to Youngstown State University will be used to fund scholarships and increase the number of campus jobs available to students.
President Jim Tressel announced the gift Wednesday morning from Flor “Shorty” and Elba Lillian Navarro.
“I really did not want this publicity,” Elba Navarro said to the people packed into the first floor of Tod Hall on campus. “Paul [McFadden, president of the YSU Foundation] talked me into this.”
She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from YSU and is a retired city schoolteacher.
Her husband came to the city from Puerto Rico as a teenager. He was 14 when he walked to a gas station on Wilson Avenue and asked the owner for a job.
Two years later, with his dad as a co-signer, Shorty Navarro bought the gas station from the same man.
“Now you can see why we’re so proud to be affiliated with this couple,” Tressel said.
After attending East High School, Navarro joined the Marine Corps. He returned to Youngstown and began selling used cars. He continued that work until 1982, when we opened a new car dealership, Lincoln Mercury on Wick Avenue.
He later expanded his business to 11 franchises and in 2012 sold most of them, retaining Stadium GM Superstore in Salem, where 65 people work.
In 2001, the Navarros established a $100,000 scholarship fund to benefit Hispanic students attending YSU.
That same year, he gave a new facility to the Organizacion Civica Cultural Hispana Americana. He also contributed $100,000 toward construction of YSU’s Veterans Resource Center.
Tressel said studies show students who work on campus are more likely to graduate and more likely to give to universities after graduation.
One of those is Amanda Cutlip of Austintown, a junior who works at the Center for Student Success at YSU.
The accounting major maintains a 4.0 grade point average and appreciates the opportunity to work on campus.
The Navarros credit hard work for their success.
Navarro joked that when he came to the city as a teenager with just the clothes he was wearing, he never dreamed he would one day give $1 million to YSU.
“Only in America,” he said. “In this country you can do anything with your life.”
Elba Navarro said the couple’s respective parents never gave them money because they didn’t have any.
But her mother stressed the importance of education. Elba worked as a hairstylist for many years before deciding she wanted to try teaching.
“I thought I would try it to see if I liked it. I loved it,” she said.
She worked at the former Roosevelt Elementary School and then Chaney High School.
Navarro learned about hard work from his parents.
“I started with nothing,” he said. “It’s just about hard work.”
The couple have been married for 50 years and are involved in several other Mahoning Valley community groups and organizations.