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| $6 million gift promises to transform programs
The UW-Eau Claire Foundation will receive at least $6 million in estate gifts — its largest gift to date — from the son of a longtime UW-Eau Claire faculty member who retired more than a half century ago. The gift is the Foundation's eighth gift of $1 million or more. The Foundation received $2 million in December as an outright gift from the estate of Lt. Col. George L. Simpson Jr., the son of one of UW-Eau Claire’s first faculty members, Col. George L. Simpson Sr. The Foundation also will receive in the future at least $4 million as a beneficiary of the estate trust, said Foundation President Carole Halberg. The Foundation’s $4 million share of the Simpson trust account will be split between university athletics and the department of geography and anthropology as designated by George Simpson Jr., Halberg said, noting that George Simpson Sr. taught geography for 35 years and was a longtime coach in the athletics department.
The $2 million outright gift will become part of the UW-Eau Claire Foundation’s Endowment for Excellence. George Simpson Jr. was born in 1923 in Eau Claire, attended UW-Eau Claire (then the Eau Claire State Teachers College) and played on the football team in the early 1940s. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he lived in De Pere and Phelps before relocating to Florida, where he lived until his death in August 2003. George Simpson Sr. was one of the original 20 faculty members at UW-Eau Claire (then called the Eau Claire State Normal School). He was a professor of geography from 1916 to 1951, taking leaves to serve during both World War I and World War II. He also served as UW-Eau Claire’s first basketball and football coach. He died in 1963. The athletic field on UW-Eau Claire’s upper campus was named Simpson Field in his memory on April 20, 1969.
George Simpson Jr.’s mother, Marie (Stannard) Simpson, was a member of the university’s first graduating class in 1917. She died in 1989. “As one of the university’s first faculty members and coaches, George Simpson Sr. touched the lives of thousands of the school’s earliest students,” Halberg said. “Thanks to the generosity of his son, UW-Eau Claire students now will be served by this family well into the future.”
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