
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 16, 1994                   TAG: 9411160165
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOUNDATION GETS $1 MILLION ENDOWMENT

The Foundation for Roanoke Valley, once referred to as the "community's savings account," announced Tuesday that it has received a $1million endowment from the estate of Lewise S. Parsley.

The wife of the late Thomas P. Parsley - who was president and chairman of Mountain Trust Bank, a predecessor to NationsBank - Lewise Parsley created the foundation's first endowment fund with a $50,000 gift three years ago. The $1million gift will be added to that endowment, which is named for Parsley and her husband.

The Parsley endowment, the largest single gift in the foundation's history, brings the foundation's permanent endowment assets to more than $3million. The foundation had $1.5million in endowment assets at this time last year.

"Throughout her life, she was keenly devoted to reaching out to other less fortunate people, as well as providing scholarship assistance to deserving students at Hollins College and the University of Richmond," Robert Bradshaw Jr., senior vice president of NationsBank Trust and Investments Department, said at a Tuesday news conference.

Parsley, a Richmond native and 1925 graduate of Hollins College, died in May. After moving to Roanoke in 1938, she organized the city's first Red Cross Motor Corps and served as its captain during World War II. She was a past president of the Mill Mountain Garden Club and a former member of the Nancy Christian Fleming Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Parsley moved to Lynchburg several years after her husband's death in 1979.

The foundation, created in 1988, works to pool bequests, trust funds and other donations that can be used to support projects in social services, education and other causes in the Roanoke Valley. The foundation has 13 named endowment funds.

The Thomas P. and Lewise S. Parsley Fund has generated more than $6,000 in grants to a variety of agencies, including the Bradley Free Clinic, the League of Older Americans, Family Service of Roanoke Valley and Bethany Hall.

The fund's purpose is to provide prescription medication for the elderly or people in dire financial need, address substance-abuse issues through community outreach programs, and provide home or organizational health services for needy individuals or families.

The foundation also announced that it had received a two-year, $40,000 administrative challenge grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Mich.

The grant is to help support the Roanoke Valley foundation's administrative functions. It requires that the foundation raise $80,000 in matching funds.

The Mott foundation, named for one of General Motors' largest stockholders, who established the foundation in 1926, is a private philanthropy that supports nonprofit programs nationally and internationally.

The challenge grant is the Foundation for Roanoke Valley's second from the Mott foundation. The first was a $60,000 three-year administrative challenge grant, awarded in 1991.

The foundation's announcements come during National Community Foundation Week, celebrating community foundations' 80 years of national service. There are more than 430 such foundations throughout the United States.

by CNB