Gifts for All of Us

Steve Goldman tells this great joke. I suppose every classical musician in the world has heard it, but I hadn’t.

A tour guide takes a group of people to visit Beethoven’s grave. As they gather around for a moment of reverence, they hear an odd assortment of notes rising up from the earth: Daaah, da da da! Daaah, da da da! When they ask the tour guide what the noise is, he says: “Oh, that’s just Beethoven, decomposing.”

C’mon. That’s a good one.

I was interviewing Goldman as one of four high-end philanthropists who are profiled in this issue of OH&L. It’s an annual tradition for us: paying tribute to the spirit of the season by acknowledging people of means who observe it all year ‘round. So I have been walking around for the past month saying: “I see rich people!”

Goldman, as you might have guessed, makes a significant contribution to the health and well-being of classical music in Orlando. Each of the three other philanthropists in our story also has a signature focus – on theater, health care and science, respectively. But they all had one motive in common: Somewhere along the line, as I interviewed them, they all made a reference to leaving the world better than they found it.

Me too, right? Anybody who’s paying attention winds up mouthing that lofty sentiment now and then, particularly at this time of year. But it’s a whole other experience to be around people who have the resources and resolve to walk the walk. It’s like the difference between watching a movie in black and white or in high-def 3D. It’s like watching the joy of giving morph from a fleeting hope and a greeting card phrase to a way of life.

That’s how I felt when another philanthropist talked about his generosity as though it were present in the room with us, so real that both of us could have reached out and patted it on the head: “It’s more satisfying,” said Dr. Nelson Ying. “It turns me on. It’s a permanent thing. I could have a pair of Gucci shoes and a Rolex watch, but that doesn’t last. That goes away.”

You might think that, in hard times, the spirit of generosity tends to disappear, particularly among those who are not as fortunate as our four well-heeled philanthropists. Not true, at least according to Robert Brown, president and CEO of Heart of Florida United Way.
 

“We do workplace-giving campaigns. That’s where most of the [fundraising] money comes from. The attitude so far is significantly better than the past two years,” he says. “I think the biggest reason is that all of us have seen friends, family and former co-workers who have really been impacted by this, and it’s, ‘Thank God it’s not me; I need to help them.’ We’re getting larger contributions from about the same number of people.

“It’s encouraging. Volunteerism is up. More people are raising their hands.”

Michael McLeod
Editor in Chief
mmcleod@ohlmag.com