Milt Morris' Story

We have many donors at National Jewish Health who have made gifts through charitable gift annuities. We also have many donors who have established charitable remainder trusts, naming National Jewish Health as a charitable beneficiary. Milt Morris is an example of a donor who has done both. His reasoning for doing both is simple. While each provides many similar benefits, they both provide some different benefits as well. Milt and his wife, Jean Morris, first completed several gift annuities with National Jewish Health. They came to appreciate the wonderful ease with which annuities can be established and the great high rates of income that they pay. They also enjoyed substantial tax benefits with the gift annuities.

As time went on, they decided that they wanted to establish a larger gift to benefit National Jewish Health and wanted to also benefit within the same gift another charity that is important to them. In addition, they were anxious to have an opportunity to keep up with inflation thereby having their income payments grow as the value of the assets within the trust grow. The charitable remainder trust was an ideal vehicle to satisfy their goals.

Milt and Jean Morris have been supporters of National Jewish Health for most of their lives. Their parents both supported National Jewish Health and the two of them carried on the support together. Jean Morris was a grandniece of Francis Wisebart Jacobs. Milt Morris moved to Denver when he was a child, because his mother suffered with asthma and Denver was a better climate for her. Milt recalls walking by National Jewish Health on his way to East High School and picking up his best friend whose father was the chief of medicine at the time. They walked together to school every day. Milt also recalls when his father was able to establish a $1,000 gift to National Jewish Health back in the early 1900s. At the time, this was one of the largest single gifts that National Jewish Health had received.