A Mother’s Lasting Gift for Her Daughter
In 1990, a final bit of school work stood between Jennifer Herzog Clark and her bachelor’s degree in English Writing & Literature: the completion of her senior comp. This rite of passage was a challenge, but Jennifer possessed a gift for writing, a love of literature—William Faulkner and Sylvia Plath were two of her favorites—and had her favorite professor, Anne Loux, by her side. She persevered and graduated, then spent the next two decades in careers involving writing.
Sadly, at age 40 and just before her 20th reunion, Jennifer passed away at her home in Tennessee after a decade-long fight with brain cancer. Left behind were her husband Matt, parents Kathy and Todd, and brother TR.
“She always said ‘Saint Mary's is one of the highlights of my life’,” Kathy said. “Her dad and I wanted to do something in her name.”
At her 20th reunion, they decided to commemorate a memorial bench outside the dining hall on Saint Mary’s campus, with a ceremony surrounded by friends and family. The family found the bench, surrounded by beautiful shade trees, to be a physical, perpetual presence on the campus she loved. As time passed, Kathy and Todd continued to make annual contributions to the Saint Mary’s Fund in support of scholarships.
Now, years later, the family has created an endowment in support of scholarships. An endowment is a gift which is added to the College’s investment portfolio. The goal is to grow the endowment over time and distribute only a percentage of the income, thereby creating a perpetual gift. “We are not on this Earth very long,” TR said. “So the thought of 100 years from now, someone getting a scholarship in my sister’s name who may not have been able to afford to go to Saint Mary’s otherwise, and maybe study the same things she did, and learn her story and be inspired by it, that’s what it’s all about.
“Our gifts to the College haven’t happened all at once,” TR added, who along with a financial planner, has advised Kathy about her investment portfolio and charitable contributions following Todd’s death in 2023. “But over the years, these gifts seem symbolic and pre-destined to realize our dream of endowing this scholarship in my mom’s lifetime.”
An initial gift of $100,000 of appreciated stock funded the endowment. This was made possible in part due to investment advice Kathy and Todd received from Jennifer. Said Kathy: “Jennifer really believed in Apple, so her father and I decided that’s what we had to do.” It proved to be a wise investment and allowed Kathy the opportunity to fund the Saint Mary’s endowment in her lifetime. She adds to the endowment with annual gifts from her IRA called Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs). A benefit of an endowment is the flexibility of additional gifts from Kathy’s estate and other individuals.
Jennifer’s father Todd was a 1966 graduate of ND, and loved his alma mater throughout his life. The family would drive 20 hours round trip from Tennessee each fall to attend one football game. For the family, their gifts to the endowment tie in a connection to both the Saint Mary’s and Notre Dame campuses. In 2012, Saint Mary’s College transitioned management of its endowment to the University of Notre Dame’s unitized investment pool. This move has enabled the College to share in the financial benefits that the much larger pool offers and provides a greater probability of achieving higher returns over the long term.
“Jennifer’s faith was very important to her, and that was something my dad was always proud to tell people,” TR said. “We were all fortunate to go to private Catholic colleges, and I think it kind of created the foundation and the value system for the rest of our lives. My sister had a great time at Saint Mary's, and was the life of every party. But she also loved spending quiet time at the Grotto.”
Kathy agreed. “We lit a lot of candles at the Grotto. You always think of your will and what you're going to do in the long term,” she said. “Her father and I always said we would do something for Jennifer. One of the things she loved most was Saint Mary’s and the friends she made there, so a scholarship in her name was right. It worked out beautifully.”
Jennifer's friends from Saint Mary’s were a blessing in her last 10 years, TR said. When she married Matt, a number of them came to her wedding, then provided comfort when her health turned for the worse. “To look at Jennifer or talk to her, you'd have no idea what she was going through. She was just an inspiration to us all.”
Until the end, she continued to go to football games and love Saint Mary's and Notre Dame. TR said Jennifer’s friends have become his daughter’s honorary aunts because Jennifer is no longer in her life. “That’s just a testament to what Saint Mary’s is about,” he said.
“What do we leave behind?” TR muses. “Jennifer didn't have the blessing to necessarily do this herself, but in this way, she is still with us. It reminds me of the person that she was and the good that she did in the world.”
May 9, 2025