Isla Carroll Turner Friendship Trust

It is altogether fitting that this first edition of our "Friends and Donors" page of the HCOA Homepage be dedicated to one of our early supporters, The Isla Carroll Turner Friendship Trust. We hope you enjoy reading about how a unique "friendship" became a major source of influence on our programs in aging here at Baylor College of Medicine. And since this benefactor of ours died before any of us ever heard of the Internet, she could not have contemplated how her legacy would someday be shared with you in cyberspace on the World-Wide Web. Well, that's progress; she would've liked that for sure.

We are all interested in the many faces of philanthropy: How did the philanthropists, ordinary people like most of us, acquire the wealth to become extraordinary people whose vision and interests benefit countless persons who never know their benefactors? and Why did they choose that particular slice of human endeavor that results in the commonweal? But it is the people behind the faces of philanthropy that make this uniquely American phenomenon so interesting to us.

Did W.K. Kellogg know that someday the fortune of his cereal company in Battle Creek, Michigan would result in a foundation that benefits the health of millions of Americans or would fund a grant to me at Baylor College of Medicine in 1972, one that is still training health professionals? Did the nineteenth century capitalist Andrew Carnegie ever know that his interest in funding pension plans for professors at private schools would pay for my retirement fund in the early 21st century?

In 1885, when Isla Randa Carroll was born in a small rural town near Temple, Texas did she know that she would become one of the faces of philanthropy? Well, she did; and like W.K. Kellogg and Andrew Carnegie, Isla Carroll Sterling Turner was one of those fortunate people who generously shared her treasure with her "friends." And subsequently the lives of untold numbers of older Texans have been and will continue to be improved because of her industry and her thoughtfulness and consideration for others.

This undated picture of Mrs. Isla Carroll Sterling Turner was taken in her later years following the establishment in 1956 of the Isla Carroll Turner Friendship Trust. Mrs. Turner's first husband, Frank Pryor Sterling was one of the founders of The Humble Oil & Refining Company destined to become today's Exxon Corporation. That group of founders drilled their first oil wells early this century near Houston in Humble, Texas. My Aunt Sadie was born in Humble because my grandfather, Boyd Hollaway, was a driller on those early wells in the Humble Field. Later, he worked in the Saratoga Field near Beaumont; in 1917, my grandfather moved his young family to a tent in "Tent City" in the Goose Creek Field in Pelly, Texas, where my mother lived when she was three years old. I was born in Pelly in 1942, and my father, returning from World War II in 1945 joined the Humble Plant in Baytown, then the world's largest oil refinery. In a way, the face of my grandfather, shown second from left with that hardy breed called "roughneckers," and later men like my pipefitter father, Robert E. Roush, Sr., contributed to the remarkarble philanthropy of the Isla Carroll Turner Friendship Trust; through their industry, oil became the prized commodity of the 20th century; through the capitalism of the Humble founders, Mrs. Turner acquired the wherewithal that, together with her compassion and generosity, was the basis for her interest in the less fortunate widows of Humble employees.

Those widows were the "friends" who received Isla Carroll Turner's benefaction. She saw to it that they were taken care of all of their lives, including their funeral expenses. Dying in 1979, at 95 years of age, she outlived all but one of the "friends." Isn't that amazing! Patron of the Arts and benefactor, her philanthropy didn't die with her. It lives on. The funds from the Friendship Trust, in keeping with her wishes, are restricted to helping the elderly in the State of Texas. This help is in the form of grants to various nursing homes, their residents, programs for the aged, and the training and education of those who serve them.

Training health professionals is where Baylor College of Medicine comes in. The late Mrs. Carroll Sterling Masterson, Isla's daughter, suggested that we submit a proposal to the Friendship Trust through Mr. Clyde J. Verheyden, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Since 1981, The Isla Carrol Turner Friendship Trust has supported 23 leading geriatricians from throughout the nation's finest programs in aging to participate in the Baylor Huffington Center on Aging Distinguished Visiting Professor Series. Two more outstanding professors are scheduled for 1996. This "Who's Who" of leaders in the field of geriatrics includes a former director of the National Institute on Aging, former presidents of the Gerontological Society of Aging, a former chief of geriatrics of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and many leaders in today's research and education efforts to give older Americans a good old age.

P.S. Isla and many of her "friends" almost made it to the century mark. Today, there are over 60,000 Americans who have joined the exalted rank of centenarian. In the next century, demographers predict that there may be as many as 2.5 million centenarians. Will you be one of them? And if so, who will take care of you. To read more about people like you want to be, click on our button, "The Centenarians," to read about the remarkable life of the late Mrs. Celeste Brown Gough, mother of Phyllis Gough Huffington; Miss Mildred Horton, one of Dr. Luchi's current patients who skips her evening Bridge parties to come to our Forum on Aging; Mrs. Audrey Stubbart, born in 1895, who, in 1996, works a 40-hour week as columnist and proofreader for a newspaper; and America's funniest centenarian, George Burns, is featured in our "Arts in Aging" section.

With friends like Isla Carroll Sterling Turner, we will learn the secrets of old age to help you too have a good old age. And just as those early Humble Oil drillers like Boyd Hollaway, we invite you to, in cyberparlance, drill down through our pages and links and find out about how you can learn more about aging and how you can help us help you. The Editor