Jeanie Marckwald Chapin '56 Gives Back with a Charitable Gift Annuity

Jeanie Marckwald Chapin '56 didn’t even know what boarding schools were when a friend mentioned that she was thinking about “going to Farmington.” Jeanie asked her parents if she could visit Miss Porter’s School as well, and she knew something was up when her father accompanied Jeanie and her mother on the drive up from New Jersey. “He worked on Wall Street and he never took off from work.”

Sure enough, the trip was momentous: “The buildings were so beautiful and everyone was so friendly,” Jeanie says. She spent four years at Miss Porter’s and then attended Smith College. In gratitude for her Farmington education, she has established a teaching fund in honor of her mother and has also created a charitable gift annuity that provides her with income and will eventually make a significant gift to the school.

“If you are lucky enough to have money and you don’t need for the roof over your head or for food on the table, a charitable gift annuity is a wonderful way to give to the school and still receive the benefits,” Jeanie says. “The school ends up receiving money, and you continue to get income payments until you pass on. It’s a win-win.”

“The gift was simple to set up,” Jeanie explains, “contrary to what some donors may think. The school made it very easy for me through working with the development office. Anyone who is considering it should give them a call.”

Jeanie grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, and now lives about ten miles away in Oldwick with her husband Charles, a graduate of Princeton. They have three daughters and six grandchildren. Their oldest daughter, Elise, also attended Miss Porter’s, as did Jeanie’s sister, Louise Ladd ‘61. Jeanie served as a member of the school’s Board of Trustees and for her service to school was awarded our highest volunteer honor: The Daisy Pin in 1996.

When Jeanie talks about her alma mater, she frequently uses the term “lifelong”: The school (and her parents) helped her develop a lifelong love of learning that inspired her to get two master’s degrees in 2002 about 40 years after her bachelor’s degree. She made lifelong friends at Farmington and maintained those friendships by serving on the Board of Trustees three different times and chairing her 25th and 50th reunions.

Jeanie developed a lifelong love of art from her art history class at Miss Porter’s. “I had never been in a museum until I took art history with Sarah MacLennan,” Jeanie says. “She was so knowledgeable and thorough that for me it opened up a new world.” Miss MacLennan taught at Miss Porter’s from 1930 to 1969; the school’s Humanities Award is named after her.

Jeanie also lauded history teacher Katherine “Kay” Smedley, who taught at Miss Porter’s from 1947 to 1975 and for whom an annual history prize is named. “She made me think critically beyond the facts on the page to the reasons behind them,” Jeanie says.

A third favorite teacher was Hollis French, who taught French before he became headmaster. “He made French class inspiring. When we were reading Around the World in 80 Days, he was so enthusiastic that he was acting out the parts,” Jeanie recalls. “In a foreign language, the story came alive.”

Her fondness for teachers is why she established the teaching fund, which is used for various faculty purposes. Many family members have contributed to the fund, which is named in honor of Jeanie’s mom, Clarissa P. Marckwald. “Even though my mother went to the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, she just loved Farmington,” Jeanie says. “She never went to college, but she was a great role model in terms of lifelong learning and teaching herself.”

That inspiration led Jeanie to go back to school in the 1990s, earning an M.A. in modern European studies from Columbia in 1999 and an M. Litt. in English literature in 2002 from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont.

After all that education, her appreciation of Miss Porter’s remains strong. “We were much less exposed to outside information in the ’50s, so much depended on the teachers. The knowledge they imparted and the encouragement and support they gave were instrumental in developing the outstanding education I received.”