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Zhang: Can you tell
us about your background, where you grew up, where you went to school?
(Play
Audio)
Brothers:
I was born in Brooklyn, New York and I’m very proud of that because
that was the home of the Dodgers, the greatest baseball team there ever
was. And I lived there all of two weeks because I was born in the
Brooklyn hospital and then my parents meanwhile had bought a house out
on Long Island and we went there, but I proudly say that I was born in
Brooklyn. And most of my growing up years was spent in New York State
because my father worked for IBM - International Business Machines – and
we traveled around a lot because they used to say if you worked for IBM
that stands for I Will Be Moved. And so, we moved and I – for example, I
went to three different high schools and then I chose to go to Vassar
because my favorite cousin was a Vassar graduate and I also chose to go
to a college for women, and Vassar was all women at that time. I felt I
would be able to develop more and get a better education if I didn’t
have boys in the classroom to distract me.
Brothers Discusses How she was Influenced to Work for Rollins Brothers: And then
President
Seymour of Rollins called up one day and he said that he was looking for
someone to help him start a professional development program at Rollins.
And he invited me to come down and visit with him. Now this was January;
in January in New England is very cold and its snowy and Dr. Seymour
said, “What do you see when you look out your window?” And I said, “I
see some dirty snow and a bedraggled squirrel”, and he said, “When I
look out of my window, I see a camellia bush in full bloom and the sun
is shining and the birds are singing.” (laughs) So, that sounded pretty
tempting…”
Brothers Explains How she was Able to Get 100% Participation from Rollins Class of 1937. (Play Audio)
Brothers:
And so when I’d been at Mount Holyoake the fiftieth reunion class
had achieved one hundred percent participation in the annual fund and
they gave a million dollars. So I thought, well, these people aren’t
trained in giving, we won’t shoot for that, but we can shoot for one
hundred percent participation and the way you get that is that you
contact everybody personally; you never do it just by mail. So that’s
what we did. We had a class committee, every single person was contacted
individually, either in person or by telephone,
and then they came to me and there were about maybe ten people that had
never given anything since they graduated – and this is nearly fifty
years. So I said well, I’ll tell them. So I’d call each one and we’d
visit and I’d tell them what was going on, and I would ask for
participation, a modest gift, and they said yea, we’ll do that. I can
send twenty-five dollars; I can send one hundred dollars, something like
that. But you see, no one had ever asked them personally and some of
them came back. Well, we got one hundred percent. Not much money, but
one hundred percent. So then I went to President Seymour and I said can
we do something special to celebrate this, and he said well what do you
have in mind? And I said let’s ring the chapel bells in honor of the
class of 1937. Zhang: I want to ask how you went from an expert in needlework to become an expert in financial advisement. Brothers:
Well, I was very interested in financial things. It
started out with my father; he always did his own income tax and I used
to “help him.” And so when I got a job, I did my own income tax and I
still do it to this day and (laughs) it’s gotten pretty complicated, but
I still do it, and I haven’t gotten arrested yet. And I really recommend
that people do their own tax returns. And, so I was interested in that,
and then I had a cousin who was an investment banker. And he gave me
some IBM stock when I was twelve years old, and he taught me how to look
up the stock values and to read the Wall Street Journal and then as soon
as I got a job I started buying stock.
Brothers Discusses her Approach
Towards Fundraising
(Play
Audio) |
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