Two Lifelong Callings; One Lasting Impact
Alumni Patsy and Gerry Kirk retired from teaching but have found a way to extend their personal commitment as educators.
“I was going to be an elementary teacher from day one,” she said. “You could ask me when I was 10 years old and I would tell you, ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’”
Her father, an engineer, wanted her to utilize her considerable academic strengths as a mathematician or engineer, but she would have none of it. Teaching was her calling.
“It just appealed to me,” she said. So much so, in fact, that she taught elementary school for 39 years.
Patsy’s husband, Gerry (’65, ’73), was similarly driven, with professional goals influenced by his love of music.
“Since I was a junior in high school, I said, ‘I’m going to be a band director,’” he said. “That was it; I was just totally focused on what I wanted to do.”
Right out of college, Gerry landed a position as a band director and taught music for 37 years. All but five of those years he spent just three miles from San Diego State University at Helix High School in La Mesa, where he was band director instructing a range of music groups including the bagpipe band, orchestra, marching band, cadet band, and music theory.
“It was heaven,” he said. “I used to tell people I loved my job so much I would teach for free and they would say, ‘Don’t tell the administration that.’”
Finding their rhythm
Patsy and Gerry met through the Marching Aztecs when she was a freshman twirler and he was a graduate student working to complete a teaching credential.They lacked a common rhythm at first. While Gerry was launching a teaching career, Patsy was still a student, but over time the pair developed a certain harmony.
That was 48 years ago. After long and gratifying teaching careers, the Kirks are retired and enjoy traveling the world and engaging in new experiences.
Gerry conducts, composes, and arranges for Bonafide Brass, a 12-member trombone ensemble. With more free time, they have both reconnected with SDSU and enjoy attending university events.
A lasting impact
Having supported SDSU through various donations, the Kirks recently began discussing ways to make a more personal lasting impact at the university. They considered creating music or education scholarships along with other possibilities, but ultimately decided to fund an endowment providing scholarships to SDSU students in perpetuity.Having come from San Diego families of modest means, the Kirks both attended local public schools and worked during their SDSU student days to fund their undergraduate educations. Each managed to graduate in four years debt free.
“And that rarely happens anymore,” said Gerry. “Today, kids have to work two or three part-time jobs and go to college, which is really hard.”
“I worked, but I was lucky enough to get some scholarship money,” said Patsy. “We just decided that the most important thing we could do at this point in our lives was to help kids go to school. It’s the right thing to do.”
To set up their endowment, the Kirks enlisted the assistance of SDSU Interim Associate Vice President of Development Mary Darling, who lauded the couple’s vision for their legacy at SDSU.
“Patsy and Gerry are not only generous, but forward-thinking in their support for future generations of SDSU students,” Darling said.
The one stipulation the Kirks made on their scholarships is that recipients come from public schools in San Diego County. Students from any academic discipline will be eligible.
“By limiting our funding to a particular area, we would not be opening doors to careers and studies that don’t exist now,” Patsy said. “There is always something new coming along and we will let the university select students in need.”
“We wanted as few constraints as possible,” Gerry said, “but we really wanted to keep it local because we are local.”
Kids are their priority
With so many possibilities to choose from, philanthropic decision-making might seem a daunting task, but for the Kirks, who basically shared the same goal – to become educators – long before they ever met, the choice was simple.
“We don’t have any children,” Patsy said.
“Everybody asks us, ‘Do you have children?’” Gerry said. “And I say, ‘We have thousands of kids.’
“Kids in college are our top priority. We want to take care of the students.”
Just as they always have.
