Hall-LeKander Endowment honors
loved ones and benefits seniors
By Jennifer Pencek
No one wants to experience the pain of losing a loved one. But for some, that pain can turn into promise—a promise to keep that person’s memory alive through action. For Peggy and Dan LeKander of Boalsburg, that action is the $50,000 Hall-LeKander Endowment in memory of the couple’s late sister-in-law, Julia Bonchack Hall, and Peggy’s deceased parents, Fred W. and Ethel S. Hall.
The 2008–2009 season of the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State jumpstarts the endowment, which was created last summer to benefit senior citizens in central Pennsylvania. The endowment provides financial support to engage the elderly in Center for the Performing Arts programs. Examples of engagement activities include, but are not limited to, subsidized tickets and transportation plus artist residencies at senior homes and centers.
“Last year my brother [David] lost his wife [Julia], who was 50,” recalls Peggy LeKander, who is the chair of the Center for the Performing Arts Community Advisory Council. “My father passed away December 23 [2007], and for awhile I was thinking about how to honor them and in what manner. Toward the end of winter, I came up with the idea to do an endowment to make the arts more open to the elderly.”
The Center for the Performing Arts sees the endowment’s value as more than a dollar amount, says Amy Dupain Vashaw, audience and program development director.
“It was a nice opportunity for us because we didn’t have a formalized program that interacted with our senior population,” Vashaw says. “We wanted the focus of this to be on those seniors who don’t get here otherwise, because the arts are an active component of lifelong learning. We’re open to the possibilities of where this might take us.”
The inaugural event supported by the endowment was October 17 when the Harlem Quartet, a component of the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, performed at Centre Crest Nursing Home in Bellefonte.
The LeKanders—members of the Center for the Performing Arts at the Leadership Circle level— attended the special performance and walked away with the feeling that the endowment, which was Peggy’s brainchild, was the right decision.
“When you have people in a nursing environment, you have an amazing spectrum of people,” Dan LeKander says. “Some people were really into the performance. The activities director of Centre Crest said it can be difficult to pack up these people and bring them [to an event] at night because they get so tired, so it’s nice things can be brought to the facilities during the day.”
Julia Bonchack Hall worked in nursing at Centre Crest before moving to placement services at the Centre County Office on Aging, and Fred Hall was a resident of Brookline Village in State College before he passed away. Peggy remembers her sister-in-law as a woman who loved her work and the elderly people she encountered each day. While at Brookline, her father loved hearing guest speakers and attending special events.
“They’d be very excited [about the endowment]—my mother as well,” Peggy LeKander says. “She was the person at home who always had music playing and was inspirational in that regard.”
Along with the performance at Centre Crest, a mix of people from various Centre County senior centers are scheduled to attend Ain’t Misbehavin’ April 14 at Eisenhower Auditorium. The Center for the Performing Arts has partnered with the Centre County Office on Aging to coordinate distribution of tickets and transportation for elderly residents.
When the Harlem Quartet performed at Centre Crest, both residents and staff were excited to see people being entertained and feeling like they are part of the community.
“It’s hard to stay connected to the community,” says Marianne Van Tilburg, therapeutic recreation director at Centre Crest. “But [residents] just enjoyed it. When we were taking a resident back [to her room], another resident saw a musician going back toward the [performance] room, and she immediately turned around and started walking back. We asked her where she was going, and she said, ‘If they’re playing more, I want to hear it.’ Residents [in attendance were] from higher level to those in the dementia unit, and the room was just filled to capacity with no one coming in or out. Everyone stayed and stayed focused on what was going on.”
Van Tilburg doesn’t have to think long about how Julia would respond to the endowment and the joy being brought to the elderly.
“I just think she’d be looking down from Heaven with the biggest smile on her face,” she says. “She was so full of fun, and she had such an infectious laugh and such a sincere interest in the residents. Even after she left Centre Crest, she still visited. Both her parents lived at Centre Crest after she stopped working here, and she just loved the residents. It’s so easy to just go to work and go home, but they became a big part of her.”
The elderly, even when they’re not relatives, can be important in everyone’s lives, Peggy LeKander asserts.
“I hope [the endowment] inspires other people as well,” she says. “When you’re thinking of who to take to a show, think of an elderly person you know or an elderly neighbor.”
The LeKanders help more than the elderly. Peggy and Dan, who have been married for twenty-seven years, underwrite jazz presentations—through their business, Corvette America—at the Center for the Performing Arts. They are also members and supporters of various organizations, including the Palmer Museum of Art, the Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania, and the Nittany Lion Club. They were contributors at the Founders level for The Bryce Jordan Center and belong to various arts and environmental organizations in Clayton, New York; the St. Lawrence Seaway in upstate New York; and Naples, Florida.
The LeKanders have a daughter, Kristen Taylor, who works in public relations and marketing in Arlington, Virginia, and a son-in-law, John Taylor, an architect. Peggy graduated from Penn State in 1975 with a bachelor of science degree in education, and Dan graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 with a bachelor of science degree in engineering and military science.
Most people don’t have the resources to create an endowment, but they can still help by contributing to an existing one. For more information contact Dave Shaffer, assistant director for special programs, at 814-863-1167 or DaveShaffer@psu.edu.
The Center for the Performing Arts offers many ways to create an endowment—or contribute to and strengthen an existing endowment. Both offer the opportunity to provide lasting support for Center for the Performing Arts programs. For more information contact Dave Shaffer, assistant director for special programs, at 814-863-1167 or DaveShaffer@psu.edu.
“We were novices about this,” says Dan LeKander. “It’s a fairly new concept for us. But it’s a gift that gives forever.”
