The Helene Fuld Health Trust is the largest charitable trust in the United States devoted exclusively to supporting student nurses and nursing education. The trust — which began as a foundation in 1935, but transferred its assets to the trust in 1969 — has provided grants, scholarships, and financial aid for the education, health, and welfare of student nurses.

History

The story of the Helene Fuld Health Trust has three parts: (i) the Estate of Helene Fuld, who died in 1923, (ii) the Helene Fuld Health Foundation, which ran from 1935 to 1969, and (iii) the creation of the Helene Fuld Health Trust in 1969.

Estate

Helene Fuld, through probate proceedings following her death in 1923 (i.e., under the auspices of the Estate of Helene Fuld, Deceased), devised $91,718 to her two children. Her husband (and father of her two children), Bernhard Fuld (1843–1918), had already died. Her children, Leonhard Felix Fuld (1883–1965) and Florentine Minnie Fuld (1878–1956), as devisees under her estate, shared the inheritance equally.

Foundation

In 1935, Leonhard Felix Fuld, LLM, PhD, and Florentine Minnie Fuld established the Helene Fuld Health Foundation, each contributing $5,000 in honor of their mother, Helene Fuld (née Helene Schwab; 1858–1923), who had been a health care and educationadvocate.

The Helene Fuld Health Foundation assets grew – from $4.8 million in 1952 to more than $35 million in 1965. In 1961, Fuld — desirous that the foundation continue after his death or incapacity — structured a succession plan that would eventually transfer the assets to a charitable trust named the Helene Fuld Health Trust.

In 1950, the foundation's address was 8 Baldwin Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey.

Charitable trust

Leonhard Fuld died in 1965. Four years later, in 1969, the Foundation was dissolved according to Fuld's instructions, and the foundation assets – around $25 million – were transferred into the Helene Fuld Health Trust that had been created in 1950. The trust, in 1969, was managed by Marine Midland Bank, of Buffalo, as sole trustee. Marine Midland, was acquired by HSBC Bank USA in 1980 and changed its name to HSBC Bank USA in 1999.

Helene Fuld Health Foundation benefactors

Leonhard Felix Fuld was born in Manhattan in 1883. Growing up, Leonhard attended Public School 57 (on 115th Street, near Lexington), Public School 83, and for high school, the Horace Mann School (located first at 9 University Place in Greenwich Village, then, in his senior year in Morningside Heights at Teachers College. In higher education, he studied at Columbia University from about 1902 to 1909, earning five degrees: (i) a Bachelor of Arts in 1903 (completing his studies in just 1 year), (ii) a Master of Arts in 1904, (iii) a Bachelor of Laws in 1905, (iv) a Master of Laws in 1906, and (v) a PhD in Sociology and Political Economy (dissertation: "Police Administration," 1,100 pages) in 1909. He went on to become an editor, an Examiner for the New York State Civil Service Commission and police security analyst, but his lifelong passion was public health and sanitation. For much of Leonhard's life, he lived with his sister in Manhattan in a tenement at 130 East 110th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues. He lived much of his life as a recluse.

Florentine Minnie Fuld was born in Manhattan in 1878. She had been a primary school teacher. Florentine Minnie Fuld died in 1956 of malnutrition at the Hospital for Joint Diseases, to which her brother had given money. Before she died, she said that she had not left her house in 9 years.

Leonhard Fuld died in 1965 at the Helene Fuld Hospital in Trenton, now known as the Capital Health Regional Medical Center.

Selected executives

• 1960s to about 1985: Gordon Alexander Philips (1917–1991) became a co-trustee of the Helene Fuld Health Foundation after the death of Leonhard Felix Fuld in 1965. In 1969, he became the President of the Helene Fuld Health Trust, a position he held until about 1971. He had served as legal counsel for the foundation in the early 1960s and in 1969, when the trust was founded, also served as legal counsel. Around that time, the trust was supporting about 170 nursing school in the United States and abroad. Philips was also the Corporate Secretary for the Helene Fuld School of Nursing in Trenton. He was also an attorney for the Helene Fuld Hospital in Trenton. Philips had also served on the New Jersey Board of Nursing for five years. He is also had been an FBI agent and municipal court judge. Philips retired in 1985. In his early days, he had attended Rutgers University and, in 1939, graduated from Wake Forest University School of Law.

Selected beneficiaries

• Helene Fuld College of Nursing, New York, founded 1945, has been a beneficiary of the Foundation and Trust since 1955, primarily from grants for (a) scholarships, (b) building renovations, and (c) equipment.
• The Helene Fuld School of Nursing in Trenton, New Jersey, was founded in 1895 as "Training School for Nurses" at Trenton City Hospital. The hospital and school changed their names in 1902 to William McKinley Memorial Hospital and William McKinley Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. In 1951 school changed its name to Helene Fuld School of Nursing, honoring the mother of its benefactor, Leonhard Felix Fuld – the same benefactor as the Helene College of Nursing in New York City. The Trenton school closed in 2011, citing, among other things, changes in nursing education. The Trenton school was not related to the New York school.
• Coppin State University, College of Health Professions, Helene Fuld School of Nursing in Baltimore was founded in 1973 and, as of 2017, offers baccalaureate degrees for RN, BSN, accelerated BSN, and a graduate program that began in fall 1999. The School offers a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) and a post-masters certification track with a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) role concentration. From 1963 to 1973, it was known as the Helene Fuld School of Nursing at Provident Hospital. At its founding in 1895, it was named the Provident Hospital Training School of Nursing. Luci V. Ashton (1870–1948), who graduated from Freedmen's Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1895, served as the school's first director for a year and a half before becoming Superintendent of Nurses at Douglass Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas. The Baltimore school is not related to the New York School.
• Columbia University School of Nursing, in its new building scheduled to open in 2017, features the Helene Fuld Health Trust Simulation Center, which occupies two floors, spanning 16,000 square feet. The Center features a highly technical simulation labs ("state of the art," according to Columbia officials) that mimic hospital patient and operating rooms.

Publications

Notes and references