Meet Our Donors
From Polio Vaccines to Charitable Contributions, Justin and Inez McCarthy Leave an Extraordinary Legacy
Throughout their lives, they demonstrated their spirit of caring for others in many ways.
Professionally, during his 45-year career at Wyeth Laboratories, Justin McCarthy once directed polio vaccine programs in 65 cities that immunized 129 million children. Locally, Justin was well known as Chairman of the Radnor Township Board of Health, the Chief Lector, and a Minister of the Holy Eucharist for St. Katharine’s Roman Catholic Church. He also served as Commissioner of Wayne Little League Baseball and founded and presided over the W.A.Y.N.E. Teen Center (Wayne Area Youth Need Encouragement).
Inez McCarthy served as President of the Friends of Radnor Memorial Library, the League of Women Voters, and the Radnor High School Scholarship Fund. With their love of crossword puzzles, gardening, and sports, the McCarthys also showed a spirit of fun and a mischievous sense of humor. Their son Dan shares, “When late May rolled around, Dad would jokingly call Mom ‘Madame Hot Dog,’ because of the time she spent manning the hot dog stand at the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair.”
Involvement with the life of their community was second nature to the McCarthys. They continued their dedication to the organizations they loved by remembering them in their estate plans. Bryn Mawr Hospital recently learned from Dan and his brother John that the hospital was one of several charities that stood to benefit from a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) the couple had created.
“Not enough people are aware of CRUTs and their extraordinary value as an estate planning tool,” said Dan. “I work in financial services and realized that the philanthropic, income and tax benefits a CRUT offers were ones my parents would want to consider, so I shared the idea with them.”
In fact, Dan relates that the first CRUT worked so well for his parents that they funded a second one; both of which are benefitting Bryn Mawr. Given the McCarthys’ charitable intent, these instruments enabled them not only to make significant gifts, but also to retain a lifetime income. They also enjoyed certain tax advantages as well as provided for their heirs by the way they structured their giving strategy. The two CRUTs played an instrumental role in helping to provide them with a secure and comfortable retirement and to leave substantive gifts to their favored charities, which included Bryn Mawr.
Dan shared that Bryn Mawr Hospital was their family’s community hospital, where his youngest sister was born, and the family sought care during occasional emergency department visits. He recalled that their general practitioner was Dr. Alexander O’Neal, a beloved icon at Bryn Mawr Hospital.
Both of his sisters, Patricia and Anne, served as candy stripers there. His father boasted that he had four hip replacements performed at Bryn Mawr and referred to himself as a “Hippie.” Dan also vividly remembers, as children, how much he and his siblings missed their mother while she spent several days at the hospital recovering from a surgical procedure, mainly because “Dad was Dad, but he wasn’t a very good Mom!”
Justin and Inez had left the purpose of their CRUT distributions to benefit the hospital as unrestricted funds. However, when Dan began discussing the gifts with Cinda Johnson, Director of Development at Bryn Mawr Hospital and learned of the campaign to renovate and enlarge the Behavioral Health Inpatient Unit at the hospital, a natural fit emerged.
Justin, who retired from Wyeth as Director of Professional & Public Relations, had a special interest in mental health and received numerous professional accolades for his involvement with many medical organizations. This included the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP). Typically, only licensed psychiatrists can become GAP members, but due to his decades-long activity and involvement, Justin was awarded honorary membership. He was proud to have attended the most GAP annual meetings of anyone.
Dan spent some of his early career years working as a House Parent and Recreational Counselor for the Devereux Foundation until Paoli Memorial Hospital hired him as a Mental Health Technician to staff their inaugural psychiatric unit. He and his siblings felt that his parents would be pleased to see their gifts helping advance behavioral health care in the community where they lived, raised a family and prospered.
Bryn Mawr Hospital is fortunate to benefit from the far-reaching generosity of those like Justin and Inez McCarthy, whose devotion to helping others leaves a legacy that will live on as we care for vulnerable patients in our new Behavioral Health Inpatient Unit.