PC supporters often donate gifts that have an immediate impact on the College. While a campaign often recognizes specific capital projects, some major gifts that are always appreciated are those that include planning or endowments.

They are given for various reasons and take many different forms, from endowing a scholarship to donating real estate, but they all significantly and immediately affect the College.

On a beautiful sunny day in May, 261 promising students became proud and promising graduates of PC.

Two days earlier in a small town 130 miles away, a feisty and articulate woman named Aitie Foan passed away at the age of 99. Mrs. Foan, a former antiques dealer and an avid reader, possessed of a sharp intellect, was widowed in the early 1980s. Friends and advisors told her she had no business playing the stock market, but, at the age of 79, she took her magnifying glass and began her daily perusal of the newspaper's market information.

Although not a PC graduate, she fell in love with our students during a visit to campus many years ago. When she died, her love for those students and the importance of their education led her to establish an endowed scholarship named for her husband and herself. She was fiercely proud that she had more than doubled the money for her PC students - to the unheard of amount of $1 million dollars. When asked how she was able to do so, she simply said " I could do it because I was doing it for them."

Aitie would have loved a PC graduation. There would stand the results of her patient and dedicated years of financial investment - students she will never know, but who hopefully will understand how much they owe this tiny little lady they will never meet.