Shea Family Supports LC and Honors Parents with Capital and Planned Gifts

My sister Linda (Chaffee ’70) and I (Loomis ’69) grew up in Windsor and were fortunate to attend Loomis Chaffee with scholarship assistance from generous alumni, parents, and friends of the school. Education was our parents’ “passport to a better life” and their highest priority for us. Our LC educations, mentors, and supportive classmates provided tremendous foundations for continued success in college and our careers, best selves values, and broader contributions to our communities and the environment.

We feel tremendous gratitude to honor those donors and support our school through Annual Fund and planned gifts to enhance the campus, support the faculty and administration, and enable deserving students to access an LC education.

My wife Sharon and I, as well as Linda, made provisions for gifts to LC in our earliest financial and estate plans and have been JMT Society members for years. Meaningful reunion experiences prompted us to further reflect upon the foundational role of LC in our lives and to make commensurate contributions. We endowed The Shea Family Scholarship to honor our parents with initial gifts and a series of planned ones. As members of the Centennial Campaign Steering Committee and having first met playing tennis at a company outing, Sharon and I planned for and contributed the lead gift to underwrite The Shea Family Tennis Courts.

While many tax deductions have been reduced or eliminated, annual charitable contributions and more sophisticated capital contributions and estate and trust planning remain tax-efficient ways to transfer assets to LC and other charitable entities. For older alumni like us, IRAs and “required minimum distributions” provide opportunities to plan and make substantial gifts to LC directly from our accounts without ever paying federal or state income taxes on these assets.

Your financial or tax advisors, the LC planned giving website section, and the school’s Alumni/Development Office are excellent sources of information on ways to do this most effectively.

— Tom Shea ’69