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Just this year, Harriet Ivey has given $200,000 to Wheeler Mission Ministries, $90,000 to the Indiana Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, $120,000 to the Mental Health Association in Marion County, and hundreds of thousands of dollars more – and not a cent belongs to her.

But she's no crook. And Ivey plans to give away quite a bit more. It's her job to make sure a total of $411 million eventually is doled out to charitable organizations.

Nina Mason Pulliam – the third wife of newspaper publisher Eugene C. Pulliam – was 91 years old when she died in March 1997. She had designated that all of her holdings in Central Newspapers Inc. stock establish the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.

Petite 53-year-old Ivey became the inaugural steward of Pulliam's assets – a whopping $411 million at the end of 1999 to be given away to Pulliam's beloved causes in Indiana and Arizona over a period of 50 years.

President and chief executive officer of the trust, Ivey works with its trustees: Pulliam's niece, Carol Peden Schatt, and former CNI board chairman Frank Russell and his wife, Nancy. As of April 30, 2002, approximately $350 million was left; $34 million has been dispersed to 451 Indiana charities.

As Pulliam's life encompassed her home state of Indiana and her adopted state of Arizona, so Ivey must navigate between the two, spending 60 percent of her time here in her elegant home on the Northeastside and 40 percent in Phoenix in a corporate-owned apartment.

Ivey's tale begins not in Indiana, as Pulliam's did, but in Mineral Point, Wis. Born Jan. 17, 1949, to pharmacy-owner Harry Ivey and his homemaker wife, Patricia, she began working for 25 cents a day in her father's drug store when she was in the third grade.

The Iveys hoped that Harriet or her older brother, Tom, would someday take over the family pharmacy business. "In high school, I got a perfect score on the state biology test. But after taking chemistry, I thought, ‘I don't think so!' she laughs heartily. "And Tom is now a cardiac surgeon in Cincinnati.

"My hometown only had 2,200 people when I grew up there. Probably the most famous person to come out of Mineral Point is Password TV game show host Allen Ludden, who was my mom's cousin."

Music has played an integral part in Ivey's life. "I began piano lessons when I was 7 years old, the flute when I was in the fourth grade, and organ lessons when I was in the sixth grade." A talented musician, she has a baby grand piano in her home. "I practiced and played in the First Congregational Church because they had an organ. In high school, I played the flute in the Mineral Pointers band," says the 1967 high school valedictorian.

She attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the turbulent '60s. "When I arrived on campus in the fall of 1967, there were anti-establishment demonstrations and tear gas. And it escalated every year from that point on.

"I was in summer school between my junior and senior years when the math research building was bombed, killing a graduate student. By my senior year, it was just total chaos. It was scary and not the innocent time that college is supposed to be. I felt robbed.

"But on the other hand, it really pushed me to think about a lot of things." In spite of the turmoil, she graduated in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in music history and theory. She also was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi honorary sorority.

At 22, she married her college sweetheart, Bruce Skelton. "My father-in-law was a Colgate University professor who had a grant from the Smithsonian (Institution) to do a six-year all-living-arts survey of India. We signed up to be part of the project for two years, but then the India-Pakistani border war broke out over Kashmir.

"The United States had a secret treaty with Pakistan and the Indians kicked all the Americans out of India." While the newlyweds waited to see how it would all shake out, they went to visit college friends at Berkeley where she fell in love with California and out of love with her husband.

"I was 24 years old when we got divorced and I thought my heart would be broken forever. I felt bad … for about six weeks!" she remembers with a laugh. "When somebody gives you bad vibes about yourself, you start believing it until you get out with other people and discover that they like you. So, he got the waterbed and I got the stereo!"

Wanting to stay in the bay area, she went to a temporary agency where she had to take a typing test. That led her to classes at the TV Typing School. While the divorce was pending, she got a $3.50-an-hour job teaching music in a community music center. "They asked me to be the faculty representative to the board of directors where I learned the whole other side of the arts … the management, organization and business of the arts.

"I fell into it and loved it, which made me pursue a lot of business courses, and I volunteered to write grant proposals for arts organizations. I found out that I was good at it. I'm very analytical. I attribute it to my eight semesters of music theory where I conducted and composed music. That's highly analytical in a very hierarchical way and it fits into the critical skills in my work," she posits, gesturing with her hands.

Her first professional job was an 11-month stint at the Oakland Symphony where she developed arts education programs. "That poor organization was falling apart but I didn't know that when I took the job," she recalls. A female mentor hired her as assistant director of development with the San Francisco Opera, a position she held for more than three years before being recruited to director of development for the Washington (D.C.) Opera at the Kennedy Center.

From there, the ambitious executive became vice president and the first female officer of Brakeley, John Price Jones Inc., a national fund-raising-consulting firm. Two years later, she left to become executive director of the Fannie Mae Foundation, which is funded solely by the nation's largest source for financing home mortgages, the Fannie Mae Corp.

Describing her transition from fund-raising consultant to grant-maker, she says, "The trail is that I had developed programs, written grants, and then raised the money. From there, my career grew to other areas of fund-raising expertise. I went into consulting about how to raise money and that gave me a lot of client experience. It's almost musical because it's highly organized and intricate," says the money maestro.

"Then I went to giving away money. If you've raised money and developed the programs on which the money is spent, then you know a lot about the other side of the table. And I knew about the other side from being an intermediary as a consultant.

"The Fannie Mae Foundation was a wonderful opportunity for me because I was the start-up head of it and I love to start new things. We grew from a budget of $300,000 a year to $25 million a year in grants by the time I left."

So what's more fun? Fund-raising or giving money away? "People ask me that all the time. There are very serious pressures if you're raising money. It's hard. It's very hard and it's very competitive. But if anybody thinks giving money away is easy, they haven't done it." she declares.

After 13 years, working seven days a week, Ivey decided it was time to leave. "If I had stayed another year, it would have resulted in burnout. I knew I wanted to stay in the field. I knew I wanted to be a CEO of a start-up. I decided I wanted to run an independent, endowed foundation that had $10 to $20 million to give away."

She was right on the money when she saw an ad for the Pulliam job in a trade paper, the Chronicle of Philanthropy. "I thought, ‘That sounds just like me!' I sent them my resume and three weeks later I interviewed and got the job. That was four years ago. I feel very lucky because it is just the right situation for both parties. It was a start-up and an interesting opportunity to work in two cities furthering Mrs. Pulliam's values."

Friends marvel at the ease with which Ivey splits her life into two locations. Lorene Burkhart Steinmetz says, "She has done a good job of living a divided life. When I first met her, I was struck by what a caring, compassionate person she is. And I thought to myself, ‘What a good match she is for the job!'

"She is always very gracious and immediately puts people at ease. That must mean a lot to people who meet her for the first time (on trust business). She is the same way when she entertains in her home. She does all of the cooking."

Schatt praises Ivey's abilities as a CEO. "She has had wide experience in the national philanthropic community and she has lived up to our hopes that she would help us establish a fine organization. She has made us a vital player from the beginning. She has launched the trust as an important part of the tapestry of two states."

Kai Binford is a resident of both states and a friend of Ivey. "She is one of my favorite people!" Binford says enthusiastically. "Her presence in both cities has made a definite difference in gift-giving to groups that are in much need of the trust's funding.

"Harriet's pleasant and soft-spoken qualities have gained her not only a place in the social structure of each city, but have enabled her to spread the word regarding the charitable trust's many contribution in these communities. She is truly an elegant lady and an asset to our cities."

"We try to balance the giving between both states," says Ivey, "because Nina loved both states and because the business in which they (the Pulliams) prospered was in both states."

A good example of that balance is the $1 million grant to the Grand Canyon National Park Foundation. The grant supported the construction of the first 10.7 miles of the Greenway Trail System, which provides a new view from the south rim of the canyon to all people, including those with disabilities. The Eagle Creek Park Foundation Inc. in Indianapolis also received $1 million for the Eagle Creek Park Campus development project.

Ivey says Pulliam would have loved the Grand Canyon grant because she visited the site more than 40 times. In fact, she and her sister celebrated Nina's 75th birthday on the canyon's Bright Angel Trail where they had birthday cake.

It wasn't a piece of cake for Ivey, who did a rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon last summer. "It was on my lifetime ‘to do' list," says the fit and trim Ivey. "I've done it! It was pretty brutal but it was so overwhelmingly beautiful."

The canyon and Eagle Creek grants account for $2 million. But where is the rest of the money kept? "Well, it's not under my mattress and it's not in the safe at work," laughs Ivey. "It's invested with different money managers. It's in equities, bonds and cash. By law, the trust, as it is now known, will have to cease to exist after the next 46 years."

In the meantime, Thanksgiving marks the perfect time to be grateful to Nina Mason Pulliam and her generous and compassionate spirit of giving. Residents in two cities have benefited from her largesse in caring and sharing. It's a matter of trust and her belief that "Charity begins at home."

Slaymaker is a local, state and national award-winning free-lance writer and past president of the Indy Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

 

SIDEBAR

HEADLINE: Nina Mason Pulliam's Legacy

So how did Nina Mason Pulliam come by $411 million? What's her story?

As a child, Nina Mason romped under the trees in the orchards her Quaker father, Benjamin Franklin Mason, cultivated in a rural area south of Martinsville.

Born in 1906, she was one of seven children in a family that had little material wealth. But money came to Nina when she married Eugene C. Pulliam in 1941 after working as his assistant secretary for several years at his Lebanon, Ind., newspaper, The Lebanon Reporter.

During his career, Pulliam owned and operated 46 newspapers. At one point, he owned 23 at the same time. The son of Methodist missionaries, the Rev. Irvin Brown and Martha Ellen Collins Pulliam, Eugene Collins Pulliam founded Central Newspapers Inc.

Three years after marrying the vivacious Nina, he purchased The Indianapolis Star and The Muncie Star. In 1946, he bought The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette. And in 1948, he purchased The Indianapolis News.

Nina, the founding secretary-treasurer and director of CNI, became the first woman admitted to Sigma Delta Chi, now the Society of Professional Journalists. It is an organization that was founded at DePauw University by her husband and nine other students in 1909.

During the Pulliam's 34-year marriage, Nina was an astute business partner who could instantly spot any weakness in a profit-and-loss statement. Her stepgrandson is Russ Pulliam, The Indianapolis Star's associate editor, Editorial Page, and director of the Pulliam Fellowships.

He recalls, "I called her ‘Nina.' She was known primarily for her work on the business side of the newspapers. But she was also a good reporter and writer and demonstrated those qualities in worldwide travel with my grandfather after World War II. They traveled to many countries and were trying to understand how the world had changed after the war. They both came away convinced of the importance of freedom as the unique contribution of the United States at this point in the history of the world."

Nina, a journalist who began her career writing for Farm Life, established the Central Newspapers Foundation in 1953. She became known as a compassionate civic leader. When Eugene C. Pulliam died in 1975, Nina became president of CNI. Retaining an apartment at the Indianapolis Athletic Club, she moved to her Paradise Valley home in Phoenix where she served as publisher of The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette until 1978.

Her niece and longtime companion, Carol Schatt, lovingly recalls, "Nina was brilliant, beautiful, energetic and had a great sense of adventure. She smoked, drank Scotch whiskey, and wore red nail polish. In later years, she quit smoking and switched to white wine but she kept wearing the red nail polish for many more years."

Nina's love affair with the Arizona desert began when she was 16 years old and suffering from tuberculosis. Her parents knew someone there and sent her there to recover. There are photos showing her riding her horse at the base of Camelback Mountain. She returned to Indiana, where she attended Franklin College and Indiana University. She also attended the University of New Mexico.

Schatt recalls, "Nina spent a good deal of her time in Arizona where I have lived since the 1960s. Our homes were not far apart. She was always a very important part of the life of my own little family. For years, my husband and I had dinner with her once a week, and in her latter years, as her only family member nearby,

"I did the things you do for your parent – taking in food or going out, going for rides and outings and social calls, talking to the doctor, gossiping, and running errands. Nina and my mother were sisters as well as best friends. So my brother and I were always very close to Nina, as were my children. She outlived all of her siblings except one, her youngest sister Katsy."

Ivey says Pulliam didn't live like someone with $411 million. She says Pulliam's Paradise Valley home "wasn't a mansion. It was just a lovely old adobe home behind a fence. It had quite a bit of land that included a beautiful cactus garden. She cultivated it with the types of plants that desert animals would like. And she fed and watered the animals. She had a housekeeper and a gentleman who drove her places and cared for the garden."