Three entities benefit from Mishes’ generosity

Published 9:15 pm Monday, February 25, 2013

The generosity of a Beaufort County couple, now dead, will enable three entities to help Beaufort County residents.

Benefitting from the munificence of W. Albert Mish and Harriett H. Mish are the Beaufort County Community College Foundation, the Beaufort County Committee of 100 and Washington’s First United Methodist Church. W. Albert Mish died July 8, 2001. Harriett H. Mish died Jan. 6, 2012.

“They agreed that they wanted to provide for their spouse and heirs from the first estate and leave a substantial amount of the estate of the remaining spouse to charity. That decision has made a huge impact,” reads a news release concerning the Mishes’ philanthropy.

Harriett Mish, in memory of her husband and herself, left generous gifts to the Beaufort County Community College Foundation, the Beaufort County Committee of 100 and to her church, First United Methodist. With the balance of her estate, she directed her co-executors to distribute in their discretion to qualifying charitable organizations.

Judy Jennette, director of the Beaufort County Community College Foundation, said the Mishes’ gift to the college opens up some new doors for the foundation.

“We’re actually going to meet in April to decide that because she didn’t put any constraints on it. This provides us with an opportunity to do a little some thing different than we’ve done in the past,” Jennette said Monday during a brief telephone interview. “There’s a subcommittee of the foundation board meeting to discuss it. … It’s just opened up a whole new avenue of giving to the college.”

Dick  Barber, president of the Committee of 100, said the gift from the Mishes likely would be used in some way to carry out the committee’s mission of bringing economic-development opportunities to the county. How that money would be used has yet to be decided, as far as he knows, Barber said.

“Everything we’re supposed to be doing relates to economic activity, anything that might help create another new job,” Barber said Monday during a brief telephone interview. “I’m being honest with you when I say I haven’t heard anybody point to either a project, or an employer or any opportunity yet where that money would be wisely used.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.

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