Philanthropy
With the millions he made, Eckerd became a philanthropist.
- Ruth Eckerd Hall, a 2,100-seat regional performing arts venue for concerts, plays and civic events in Clearwater, Florida, was named for his wife Ruth Eckerd. It was designed by the Arizona-based Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and opened in 1983.
- Florida Presbyterian College in St. Petersburg, Florida, changed its name to Eckerd College in 1972 following a $12.5 million contribution from Jack, who also served for a time as its interim president.
- In 1968, Jack and Ruth Eckerd founded Eckerd Youth Alternatives (known simply as "Eckerd"), a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to strengthening children, families and communities, using an Outdoor Therapeutic Program model that included opening the first OTP in the state of Florida for boys in 1968 and the first first OTP for girls in the southeastern United States. The Eckerd organization's success with outdoor therapeutic programming soon expanded beyond Florida to several states. Today, Eckerd serves more than 13,000 youth and families annually through a continuum of over 30 behavioral health and child welfare services, ranging from early intervention & prevention to community-based interventions, out-of-home care, and aftercare. Sites are currently (as of 2012) in six states: Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Vermont and Iowa.
- National Foundation for Youth, a philanthropic organization begun in 1994 to support programs benefitting troubled young people, was later merged into the work of Eckerd.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)