AAA Bequeathed $79,000

Stacy Lathrop
Anthropology News

When anthropologist and AAA member Kathrine Story French died on June 14, 2006, the AAA was left a generous gift of $79,000 by her husband, David H French, who died February 12, 1994.
In 1967 David French, then a member of the AAA Executive Board and AAA representative to AAAS, established a trust through his Last Will and Testament. Through this will he entrusted the AAA as the beneficiary of the trust’s assets at the time of his wife’s death.

David French not only served the AAA during a critical time in its history, but he also had been the cornerstone of anthropology at Reed for 41 years and a friend to many Chinookan and Sahaptian speakers from the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon.

Service to the Association

In 1988 the AAA honored David French with a Distinguished Service Award for his exceptional contributions to the profession. During the time French sat on the AAA Executive Board from 1963 to 1968, the AAA was faced with a number of challenges. In May 1966 the board voted to release an Interim Statement on Research Problems and Ethics published in The Washington Post, which addressed the “deep concerns” of members “about the involvement of some universities and individual social scientists in ‘counter-insurgency’ research financed by the Government.”

In 1966 the AAA also found itself in fiscal crisis. As the executive board reported to AAA members in the 1966 AAA Fellow Newsletter, AAA “would have been completely bankrupt within another 15 months” had they not authorized a number of changes to reduce the size of the deficit budget submitted to them for the 1966–67 fiscal year. At that time the board also laid plans for raising additional urgent and continuing support from benefactors within and outside of the association.

An Exceptional Teacher and Scholar

David French, along with his wife Kathrine, nurtured in their many famous students an ethic of returning knowledge to those from whom it came, of preserving cultural heritage and for appreciating the history of anthropology. In the obituaries David French’s students wrote for him, including May Ebihara’s for AN and past AAA President Dell Hymes’ in the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas Newsletter, a deep and far-reaching historical legacy was brought to life.

David French’s biography is a partial view into the history of anthropology. Born in Bend Oregon on May 21, 1918, he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for three years (1935–39), studying under Morris Opler. French transferred to Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School to complete his BA (1939) and MA (1940) under Opler who moved there. During this time he gained research experience in archaeology in Oregon under Luther S Cressman and Southwest mythology assisting Opler.

French’s PhD work at Columbia University involved studying under Ralph Linton and Ruth Benedict, and being heavily influenced by the anthropology of Franz Boas, who died while French was at Columbia. French’s dissertation was on factionalism at Isleta Pueblo in the Southwest. Defended in 1943 and conferred in 1949, the dissertation was based on fieldwork in the United Pueblos agency from 1941–42.

In 1943 French married Kathrine Story, whom he had met at Pomona and who was also pursuing a PhD in anthropology at Columbia. From 1943 to 1946, the Frenches served as community analysts with the War Relocation Authority.

French taught at Reed from 1947 until his retirement in 1988. Except for periods as visiting professor at Columbia University (1954–55), the University of Washington (1959), and Harvard University (1960–61), French presided over the establishment of anthropology as a separate department at Reed.

In 1949, David and Kathrine French began a decades-long research involvement with the Warm Springs people. Among their contributions to Warm Springs ethnography are an exhaustive ethnobotanical inventory, numerous published articles on topics such as oral narrative and the relationship between language and culture, indigenous and scientific classifications, and a dictionary of Wasco-Wishram.

While French explored ethnobotany among other groups, including in the Massif Central region of France where he accompanied Claude Lévi-Strauss, he is best known for his Warm Springs work, and in 1989 he received a Certificate of Appreciation from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. As Dell Hymes describes in his obituary for French, the French house across the street from Reed was a stopping off point for friends from Warm Springs, students and colleagues, and his basement became a sort of library, language lab and archive. In the 1970s, Hymes relates that French became the “general secretary” of Michael Silverstein’s work on Chinookan.

Ebihara noted in her AN obituary that French “had a passion for meticulous and painstaking ethnography, as well a critical and sophisticated grasp of theoretical issues.” His scholarship crosses many disciplinary lines—linguistic, psychological and botantical. He participated in conferences with linguists Carl Voegelin and Roman Jakobson, and with psychologists as a fellow at the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies organized by Jerome Bruner. He worked with natural scientists on botanical studies, and a species of the plant Lomatium of the family Apiaceae was named after him.

French’s most significant publications remain a long 1961 article on culture change at Warm Springs and several articles co-authored for the Smithsonian Institution’s Handbook of North American Indians, particularly contributions on Plateau subsistence, naming practices and the Wasco-Wishram-Cascades peoples.

Many of French’s students pursued careers in anthropology or were influenced by anthropology. Among them: Dell Hymes, Gail M Kelly, May Ebihara, Katherine Verdery, Robert A Brightman, Robert E Moore and poet Gary Snyder who dedicated his book Myths and Texts to French.

The AAA is grateful to David H French for his contributions to anthropology and for his generous bequest to the association.

The Benefits of Planned Giving

Richard D Barrett
Barrett Planned Giving

Planned giving offers donors to AAA win-win ways to further anthropology and enhance their personal financial planning. For donors, planned gifts can generate lifelong income, convert low-yielding assets into a higher income stream at a reduced capital-gains cost, obtain significant income tax deductions, and reduce or eliminate estate taxes.

Outright Gift Benefits

Owners of appreciated assets can obtain substantial tax benefits by transferring those assets directly to the AAA. Donors not only receive an income tax deduction equal to the fair market value of the stock on the effective date of their gift, but they avoid capital gains tax on the transfer. These gifts of appreciated securities are also excellent assets for funding life income gifts such as charitable annuities, deferred annuities and charitable trusts.

Gifts made by will are an important and valuable source of individual support to AAA. Bequests can be made in the form of a specific gift of cash or property, or as a percentage of the remainder of an estate. AAA’s legal counsel approves of the following language for making a bequest to the association: “I give to the American Anthro-pological Association, a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization located at 2200 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600, Arlington VA 22201-3357 (Federal Tax ID Number 53-0246691), the sum of $__ (or ___% of my estate; or the property described herein) for its general purposes.
Charitable gift annuities are contracts between the AAA and a donor that provide for the payment of life income at a fixed rate. Donors of at least $10,000, the minimum cash or securities contribution to establish a gift annuity, receive an income-tax deduction in the year of the gift, subject to the usual rules of deductibility. The annuity has an attractive provision for the taxation of the life income: a portion of each payment is treated by the IRS as a return of a donor’s principal and is therefore nontaxable; another portion is taxed as a capital gain to a donor if appreciated assets were contributed; and the balance is taxed as ordinary income.

A charitable remainder trust allows a donor to transfer assets into a separately managed trust that will provide beneficiaries named by the donor income for life or a specific period of years. Donors decide the payout of the trust in consultation with their selected trustees, who then have the responsibility to manage the assets of the trust, provide tax statements to the IRS and the beneficiaries and issue beneficiary payments on a periodic basis. When the last income beneficiary dies, the assets remaining in the trust then pass to the AAA.

Careful planning for the disposition of tax-deferred retirement plan assets, such as an IRA, KEOGH, 401k or 503b, can eliminate or reduce taxes on the proceeds. By instructing the trustee of a retirement plan to leave all or a portion of the account to the AAA, a donor can avoid multiple layers of taxes and leave other, less tax-encumbered assets to heirs.

The large cash value resulting from a relatively small premium makes a life insurance policy an attractive planned gift. A fully paid up policy can be donated by naming the AAA as its irrevocable owner and beneficiary, entitling the donor to an income tax deduction for an amount equivalent to the cash value of the policy. A life insurance gift can also be made by donating a policy on which premiums are still owed, naming the AAA as irrevocable owner and beneficiary, entitling the donor to an income tax deduction for an amount equivalent to the cash value of the policy and for any additional gifts made to fund premium payments. Another way these gifts can be made is by purchasing a new policy, naming the AAA as irrevocable owner and beneficiary, entitling the donor to an income tax deduction for gifts made to the AAA that are designated for premium payments.

Gifts of Income

A charitable lead trust holds an income-producing asset for a fixed term, or for the life of an individual, during which time the income is paid to the AAA. At the conclusion of the trust term, the asset is returned to the donor or to another beneficiary.

To receive AAA’s Ways to Give brochure, or to ask questions about planned giving, contact: Elaine Lynch, AAA Deputy Director; tel 703/528-1902, ext 3018; fax 703/528-3546; elynch@aaanet.org.