Larry Ankuda’s father never forgot his family’s struggles during the Great Depression. Back then, his dad told him, kids had to make their own toys; they’d even compete with each other for leftover apple cores.
“That’s how poor and hungry they were,” Larry recalls. “That made an impression on me.”
The troubling memories are the reason his father urged his eldest son to go to college and become an engineer, so that even in hard times, he would have a job. Larry followed that advice, earning a degree in chemistry at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland.
By 1969, Larry was a plant engineer at the Kaiser Permanente Cement Plant in Cupertino. Later on, to expand his business acumen, he enrolled in night school at Santa Clara University, earning his MBA in 1975.
The degree reinforced his father’s wise counsel, giving Larry the confidence to start his own business selling special equipment to industrial companies.
“The MBA was life-changing,” says Larry, who like his father before him, paid for his two daughters’ college educations. His youngest, Ellen MacDermid ’90, chose Santa Clara University. “Santa Clara made such an impression on me and my daughter,” says the retiree. “My wife, Erica, and I wanted to do something not just for the university, but for a student.”
Larry and Erica chose a charitable remainder trust with payouts to benefit their grandchildren. The assets remaining in the trust after the term ends will create a scholarship for students who major in history.
Like the Ankudas, you can make a difference for our students and faculty with a gift that can provide you or your loved ones with income for the rest of their lives or a term of years. To learn more, contact the Office of Planned Giving at 408-554-2108 or giftplanning@scu.edu today.