Maryanna Andrus Scholarship Fund
Donation protected
This site has been set up to accept donations in lieu of flowers for the creation of a scholarship fund in memory of Maryanna Andrus (later Maryanna Hartman and Maryanna Tacka), 1942-2016. We recently lost Maryanna to Alzheimer’s disease. She was greatly loved by the children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews and cousins she leaves behind, and indeed by many other people (friends, neighbors and co-workers) whose lives she touched.
Maryanna’s family was not well off financially as she was growing up. However, the Andruses were one of the richest families on the northside of Elmira, NY when it came to the esteem in which they were held by friends and neighbors. In large measure this was due to the influence of the family matriarch, Betty Andrus, who was well known in her community for her kind nature and selfless generosity of spirit.
From her mother Maryanna learned early to put the needs of others ahead of her own wishes. While still a child herself she became something of a second mother to her younger siblings, taking care of them and helping to raise them when her own parents needed to be away from the household working to make ends meet. She also began working as a telephone operator as a teenager to help support her family. In her large family, as in her mother’s family a generation earlier, the young men generally went off to college while the young women stayed home and worked, helping the family make ends meet.
In her later years Maryanna fulfilled a lifelong dream to get a college education by completing an associate’s degree from Corning Community College when she was in her 50s, graduating Summa Cum Laude and earning full scholarship offers to complete her bachelor’s degree from numerous four-year colleges in New York and Pennsylvania. She did not continue her higher education because her condition of early onset Alzheimer’s disease posed increasing challenges to her in her studies. Her few years of college late in life were among her proudest moments, because she had the chance to pursue a dream that was not an option when she was a young woman right out of high school.
The donations to this fund will be collected and used to form a charitable trust that will award partial college scholarships to young women like Maryanna who might otherwise lack the means to pursue college studies because of their own or their families’ financial hardship.
The family of Maryanna sincerely thanks all those who choose to give to this fund, to be established in her memory, in lieu of flowers for her funeral.
Maryanna’s family was not well off financially as she was growing up. However, the Andruses were one of the richest families on the northside of Elmira, NY when it came to the esteem in which they were held by friends and neighbors. In large measure this was due to the influence of the family matriarch, Betty Andrus, who was well known in her community for her kind nature and selfless generosity of spirit.
From her mother Maryanna learned early to put the needs of others ahead of her own wishes. While still a child herself she became something of a second mother to her younger siblings, taking care of them and helping to raise them when her own parents needed to be away from the household working to make ends meet. She also began working as a telephone operator as a teenager to help support her family. In her large family, as in her mother’s family a generation earlier, the young men generally went off to college while the young women stayed home and worked, helping the family make ends meet.
In her later years Maryanna fulfilled a lifelong dream to get a college education by completing an associate’s degree from Corning Community College when she was in her 50s, graduating Summa Cum Laude and earning full scholarship offers to complete her bachelor’s degree from numerous four-year colleges in New York and Pennsylvania. She did not continue her higher education because her condition of early onset Alzheimer’s disease posed increasing challenges to her in her studies. Her few years of college late in life were among her proudest moments, because she had the chance to pursue a dream that was not an option when she was a young woman right out of high school.
The donations to this fund will be collected and used to form a charitable trust that will award partial college scholarships to young women like Maryanna who might otherwise lack the means to pursue college studies because of their own or their families’ financial hardship.
The family of Maryanna sincerely thanks all those who choose to give to this fund, to be established in her memory, in lieu of flowers for her funeral.
Organizer and beneficiary
Steven Hartman
Organizer
Elmira, NY
Ronald Hartman
Beneficiary