Pioneering Botanist Plants Seeds for KQED and KTEH Cranford
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
visions Financial and Estate Planning Ideas for Friends of Northern California Public Broadcasting SPRING IN VISIONS Pioneering botanist benefits Eight Ways to a Better Program Notes 2008 KQED and KTEH Estate Plan Emily Hamilton in the film, Personal Spectator, on ImageMakers, airing in July. Pioneering Botanist Plants Seeds for KQED and KTEH Last fall KQED and KTEH — along settled in San Jose, near Mark’s family home, with other public broadcasters and charities and started their own family. While raising — received a bequest from long-time their two children, Thomas and Marcia, member Natalie Ames Hopkins. Natalie’s Natalie also volunteered in social work and daughter, Marcia Hopkins, says that her on boards of an orphanage and other youth Photo: ©Nick Briggs/ mother was “a wonderful, caring, compas- service organizations. Tom remembers BBC 2007 for sionate person. She felt that since she was hearing his mother fundraising on the MASTERPIECE lucky enough to have some money, she phone after dinner. would like to share it with others.” Her The family vacationed in California’s MAsteRpiece: bequests were typical of the person who coastal mountains, on its seashores, and in gave herself to scientific inquiry, her family, the Sierra Nevada, and Natalie cultivated and people less fortunate than her. a deep interest in the natural world. In the Cranford Natalie Hopkins was born in Wellesley, mid-1960s, when Tom and Marcia were in If you can’t get enough of Judi Massachusetts in 1919, one of four sisters. college, Natalie went back to school and Dench on As Time Goes By, if you Her father, a Yale-educated social worker and started her second career. She enrolled at miss seeing Michael Gambon on Inspector Maigret, catch Cranford headmaster of a school for low-income boys, San Jose State University for a second on KQED TV in May. A sleepy was Natalie’s mentor and role model. bachelor’s degree, this time in botany, 1840s English village comes to Natalie graduated from Oberlin College in followed by a master’s degree in biology. life with gossip, parties, 1940 with a B.A. in English Literature, and, The Canadian Journal of Botany romances, sudden death, and soon after, married Mark Hopkins. After published Natalie’s master’s thesis, a bankruptcy in the three-part Cranford, based on the Victorian- Mark’s service in the European theater of pioneering study of mycorrihizae in a era writings of Elizabeth Gaskell. World War II as a B-26 navigator, they plantain native to California’s Santa Cruz The all-star cast also includes Mountains. (A mycorrhiza is the mutually Eileen Atkins, Francesca Annis, beneficial association occurring between and Imelda Staunton. plant roots and a soil fungus.) Carol Selter, a friend, colleague, and former classmate at San Jose State, says that Natalie was deeply interested in evolution and was “an early adopter of the idea that competition is not the only force driving nature and that continued on page 3 Natalie Hopkins, center, with son, Tom, at left 4 1 NATURE: Prince of the Alps High in the Austrian Alps, a female red deer and her calf are at the center of a wilderness story about mountain wildlife and the natural and human threats to their survival. This new episode of NATURE airs on KQED TV on May 11 at 8 p.m. Red deer calf, approximately two weeks old. Photo: ©Otmar Penker Lock in Current Generous Annuity Rates Eight Ways to a Better Estate Plan You can make a gift using cash, If you haven’t already done so, today is 3. Name a Power of Attorney stock, or mutual funds valued at a good day to begin planning your estate. $10,000 or more. Your gift will Assign someone to act for you in the event bring you income for life and may Planning your estate will give you control that you become unable to handle your benefit you by reducing your of your property’s ultimate disposition. financial affairs yourself. A durable power taxes. It will also support public Moreover, careful planning can help you of attorney can also provide for property broadcasting. Annuity rates will avoid estate taxes, which for some may be management and disposition rights. decrease slightly on July 1. You as high as 45 percent. Here are some tips for can take advantage of our current generous rates by establishing proper estate planning. 4. Create an Advance Health your gift annuity now. Care Directive 1. Prepare or Update Your Will or Draft an advance health care directive Living Trust Some Sample Current (living will) that makes known your wishes As the basis for distributing the majority Rates l Spring 2008 regarding extraordinary measures for of your assets, your will or trust is the most keeping you alive. An advance health care Your Age Annuity Rate important component of your estate plan. directive gives family members and doctors 65 6.0% You should review your estate plan every the necessary information and authoriza- 75 7.1% three to five years and also after times of tion to make decisions about your care 85 9.5% personal change, such as marriage, divorce, when you are unable to communicate your 90 and over 11.3% birth, adoption, death of an heir, wishes. You will also help your family by Your Ages Annuity inheritance, or a move to another state. informing them in advance of your wishes. (couples) Rate Tax laws also change often and may alter 67/65 5.7% the effectiveness of your current estate 5. Check Up on Insurance 75/73 6.2% plan. For example, the tax-sheltered estate Periodically evaluate your insurance to 85/83 7.6% amount is scheduled to increase from make sure that you have enough to cover 95/95 and over 11.1% $2,000,000 to $3,500,000 in 2009. changing needs and that your life insurance Current law (as of this writing) provides beneficiary designations are up to date. Donor(s) for a one-year repeal of the estate tax in 2010, reverting to a $1,000,000 shelter in 6. Watch Your Investments 2011. Given the intricacies of tax law and Commit to learning more about the uncertainties of future tax legislation, investments, and make sure your portfolio 2 1 obtaining professional advice will help is appropriately balanced and that your Income tax Gift of ensure that you have an effective investments are properly managed. In deduction & property estate plan. addition, make sure that you have set aside fixed income enough in your retirement plan to take care 2. Choose an Executor Charitable of your future needs. Your finances are your Gift Annuity or Trustee future, and the more you learn, the easier Carefully consider the individual or and more interesting investing becomes. institution you name to act as your Keep in mind that if you have other assets 3 executor or trustee, who will bear the to leave your heirs, unused retirement plan responsibility of carrying out your wishes. Remainder benefits will bring more benefit to charities. to NCPB You will want to name someone you trust This is because, when left to heirs, they implicitly and who is qualified to act. You may be doubly taxed as ordinary income might consider naming a family member and as part of your estate. On the other or close friend, along with a qualified NCPB financial institution. continued on page 4 2 3 Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! Wins Peabody Award In April Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, the popular NPR news quiz show, was named a winner of the 67th Annual George Foster Peabody Awards. “We are delighted that the Peabody Awards committee, long known for recognizing excellence and achievement in broadcast media, has finally decided to reward something else,” said host Peter Sagal. “We are thrilled and grateful … and with this kind of encouragement will probably behave even worse in the future.” The announcement was made on April 2, the birthday of NPR newscaster Carl Kasell, who serves as the show’s official judge and scorekeeper and whose voice is behind the coveted quiz prize: a custom recorded greeting from Kasell for the winner’s answering machine. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! airs on KQED Radio on Saturdays at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. Carl Kasell photo: Antony Nagelmann 2001 Recent Endowment Gifts Welcome to New Legacy Society KQED and KTEH are grateful for the more Miles Bohm Auer Estate • Ruth L. Bittman Members than $630,000 from 21 estates it received in Revocable Living Trust • Charlotte Black The Jonathan C. Rice Legacy 2007. These far-sighted donors — many of Charitable Gift Annuity • Bernice Canata Society honors those who have whom were KQED and/or KTEH members Trust • Harry S. Exline Trust and Estate of the vision to provide for KQED’s and KTEH’s future with a for decades — made legacy gifts in amounts Harry S. Exline • Estate of Catherine Mary planned testamentary gift. ranging from $1,000 to over $170,000. Godman • Ethel Golder Trust • Arthur S. The following people became Unless otherwise designated, all legacy gifts Gray Jr. Revocable Living Trust • Edward R. Legacy Society members are added to the Northern California Public Haldan Charitable Gift Annuity • Maida in 2007. Broadcasting Endowment. KQED and Hart Trust • Louis Heilbron Revocable Trust KTEH also received outright Endowment • Helen Hipshman Trust • Hopkins Trust • Anonymous (19) Betty P. Bass gifts from the Hurlbut-Johnson Charitable Estate of Drake Prentiss • Margaret Purvine Gregg Cook and Victor Rosario Lead Trusts, Loretta Mak, and the Edwin Irrevocable Trust • Mary S.