Make Accessible Higher Education Your Legacy 97-Year old UMHEF donor still gives!

Standing on a hill overlooking the rubble and chaos of Stuttgart, Germany near the end of World War II, 18-year-old Orris E. Kelly wondered, “How in the world are those people ever going to recover from war?” A fellow soldier said, “If I had the guts, I’d be a minister.”

Young Chaplain Kelly couldn’t get those words out of his mind. Before the war, Kelly was preparing for a career in civil engineering, but war and those words changed him and changed his plan. He had the “guts.” He felt called to a lifetime of ministry as a chaplain, and like millions of Americans in uniform returning from the battlefield, he needed an education and job training to reach his goals.

Kelly attended Kansas Wesleyan University and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He was ordained and served as a military chaplain for over two decades, and in 1975, Chaplain (Major General) Orris E. Kelly was appointed by President Ford to be the 14th Chief of Chaplains of the United States Army, the highest rank a chaplain can achieve. Chaplain Kelly is a faithful donor to the United Methodist Higher Education Foundation (UMHEF) because two United Methodist institutions gave him the skills and knowledge he needed for a life of service to God and country.

UMHEF did not exist when Chaplain Kelly went to college and seminary in the 1940s, but it is worth mentioning that the man who sparked the launch of the foundation was a co-creator of the GI Bill that did financially assist Kelly. In 1944, William Pearson Tolley, the President of Syracuse University at the time, recognized the critical role education could have on the lives of returning World War II soldiers. Twenty years later, during the 1964 General Conference of The Methodist Church, Tolley urged fellow Methodists to establish a foundation to make Methodist schools more affordable and accessible to qualified Methodist students.

Since then, UMHEF—then-named the Methodist Foundation for Christian Higher Education—has awarded over $25 million to more than 10,000 students. Visionaries like Tolley and donors like Chaplain Kelly made this, the sixtieth year of UMHEF, possible.

On a little note tucked in an envelope, along with his most recent donation to the foundation, Chaplain (Major General) Orris E. Kelly wrote, “At 97, I still want to [give] support.”

If you share the vision that education at UM-related schools can open doors of opportunity, consider giving your support in honor of UMHEF’s 60th year.