After Jan Morgan Rosen ’62 lost both her husband and sister in 2012, she needed to revise her estate plan. An especially complicated asset was oil and gas mineral rights that she had inherited from her mother. Trinity was the perfect solution.
The Dora Willis Morgan Scholarship Endowment Fund will one day help academically qualified, outstanding students who need aid to attend Trinity University. The funds will come from royalties paid on oil and gas production on the mineral rights. Trinity will not sell the rights themselves, so the fund should last in perpetuity.
Rosen, who moved from Long Island to Tulsa two years ago, recalls that when she was a child her mother gave her an allowance of 50 cents a week, and stipulated that she put a nickel into the weekly collection at Sunday school. Charitable giving was always a priority for Mrs. Morgan, so the Trinity bequest seemed fitting.
Mineral rights are “much more complicated than investments like stocks and bonds,” Rosen says. But Trinity has an expertise in handling them. Her far-flung family members will inherit more easily understood and divisible financial assets and possessions.
Rosen’s father, David Carroll Morgan, Jr., died when she was only 2, and four months later her sister Sally was born. Mrs. Morgan raised her two daughters while doing office work to support her family. She learned to do land work in the oil business, and late in her career acquired the mineral rights that are now in the Jan Morgan Rosen Living Trust, of which Trinity is the ultimate beneficiary.
Rosen graduated from Trinity magna cum laude with a B.S. in journalism, then earned an M.S. at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She first became a reporter for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, then moved to The Houston Chronicle in 1965, then to Newsday on Long Island. She joined The New York Times in May 1968 and held a variety of jobs in financial news over a long career and even continued to write occasional articles for The Times after retirement.
She believes Trinity prepared her for a fulfilling career and gave her the important liberal arts education that Columbia requires and that she believes is needed for a civilized society.
Therefore, she wants to help future students benefit from an invaluable Trinity education.
For additional information, please contact us.