WORTH SUPPORTING
Three of five Helmsley scholars at the hotel school, from left: Diana Zehr 12, Jose Arrue 10 and Rebekah Victory Falcone 10.
Hotel School students get big boost from Helmsley Charitable Trust
"I saw it on my financial aid letter," remembers sophomore Diana Zehr '12, "and I thought, 'What's this, all this money ?'"
Zehr is from rural Lewis County, about two hours north of Ithaca. Her mother is a parts manager at a John Deere dealership, and her father is a logger and truck driver. A few generations back, Zehr's people were Mennonites from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France.
Zehr requires substantial financial aid to attend Cornell, and the unexpected windfall in her aid package this year was a Helmsley Scholarship.
The scholarship is the result of a $2 million gift this past summer from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to endow scholarships in the School of Hotel Administration. It was the largest such gift in the school's history.
"The Helmsley gift could not have come at a better time," says Michael Johnson, dean and E.M. Statler Professor of Hotel Administration. "In this economy, more students require aid, and fewer individuals and foundations are able to give support. Endowed scholarships like the Helmsley Scholarship are crucial to helping us assemble the most diverse and talented student body possible. This gift will provide a tremendous lift as we continue to work toward meeting those needs."
"My big, long-term dream," says Zehr, "would be to build a little hotel where I live. There are no hotels there now, only two out in Lowville. It's mostly dairy farms."
Harry Helmsley's boyhood dreams may have been much like Zehr's: to build a hotel where he lived, though his hometown was New York City. He had grown up poor and worked his way up from running errands for a real estate firm to becoming that firm's owner. Renamed Helmsley-Spear, his company grew to lease and manage more than 100 million square feet of space -- office, commercial and manufacturing.
In 1972, by then the city's pre-eminent real estate broker and investor, Helmsley married Leona Roberts and together the couple expanded his already huge empire of signature properties that included the Empire State Building, the Lincoln Building, the Helmsley Palace, the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, the Flatiron Building and more than a dozen other high-profile buildings from New York to Florida.
The four other Helmsley scholars this year are Jose Arrue '10, Ana Guiu '12, Rebekah Victory Falcone '10 and Braden Birch '13. They are from small towns, like Zehr, and big cities. They are future hotel managers, restaurateurs and entrepreneurs. What they have in common, it seems, is a passion for hospitality, and like all students at the Hotel School, they have demonstrated academic excellence.
Arrue, who serves on the board of directors for Hotel Ezra Cornell and is a supervisor in the Statler Hotel's front office, was born and raised in Guatemala before moving to New Jersey. "The dean sent out an update before school started, including congratulations to the new Helmsley scholars and I saw my name. I was extremely happy. It's been a tough year for my family," he explains.
During their lifetimes, Harry and Leona Helmsley donated a significant amount of money to numerous charities, including approximately $70 million to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The year before she died, Leona Helmsley made a gift of $25 million to the hospital and medical center for the creation of a comprehensive center for digestive diseases.
Leona Helmsley's bequest surprised even those familiar with her extensive philanthropy: she left almost all of her estate -- valued at approximately $5 billion -- to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Thus, at her death in 2007, she made the largest charitable gift of the year in the United States -- one of the largest of the decade -- establishing the trust as one of the richest in the United States.
"We are implementing Leona and Harry Helmsley's tradition of great generosity," said the trustees in a statement. "This scholarship fund will enable future stars of the industry to get the education they will need to rise to be successful in their chosen field, befitting the legacy of the Helmsley name."