Widow’s Bequest Gives Children’s Charity and Those It Serves Reason to Smile

In October 1996, Jeanne Cox Brady saw a television show that would change not only her own life, but also

the lives of hundreds of children around the world.

Watching The Geraldo Rivera Show, she saw Mr. Rivera interview Dennis M. Nigro, a San Diego surgeon who had founded a nonprofit group to do reconstructive surgery on children with physical deformities caused by birth defects, accidents, abuse, or disease.

Within days, Ms. Brady — a wealthy widow and artist with little background in medicine — had contacted Dr. Nigro’s charity, Fresh Start Surgical Gifts, and made a donation to support its work. Over the years, she became its principal donor, making additional gifts that eventually totaled more than $840,000. A few months before her death in 2001 at age 94, she even gave the charity her home in La Costa, Calif., worth about $1.6-million.

But Ms. Brady’s largest gift was her bequest, announced last year, of $18.2-million. For a charity with an annual cash budget of $1.2-million, a sum that large can stimulate big dreams.

“We’ve been used to being so conservative with our money,” says Steven F. Edwards, the interim chief executive for Fresh Start, which relies heavily on more than 500 volunteers and on donated space, supplies, and equipment, but which still struggles to cover its costs.

“Our niche is to provide high-quality medical care to kids with complex cases,” Mr. Edwards says. Unlike Operation Smile and other programs that send medical teams to other locales to do reconstructive surgery, he says, Fresh Start operates only in San Diego because it tackles cases that often require several operations and months of follow-up care.

Helping 2,000 Youngsters

To date, the charity has treated more than 2,000 children with cleft lips or palates, webbed or extra digits, unsightly scars, or other disfiguring conditions.

Its young patients come not only from across the United States but also from several other countries, including Cambodia, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Yemen. The patients, who learn of the charity from various sources, must apply for treatment; if accepted, they can expect their travel and lodging expenses to be covered by the charity.

It often is not practical to house the youngsters and their parents or guardians with host families in private homes for weeks or months at a time, so one option the charity is considering is to use part of Ms. Brady’s bequest to buy or build housing that can accommodate such visitors.

Another option would be to put most of the principal in a permanent fund, and use the income to supplement the money it raises from other sources.

Currently, Mr. Edwards says, the charity mobilizes volunteer surgical teams to operate on one weekend about every six weeks, depending on which hospitals have agreed to free an operating room. The teams typically perform more than a dozen major operations in a weekend and treat more than a dozen dental patients, while also offering postoperative checkups, pre-surgery consultations, speech therapy, and other treatments.

“We’re lucky if we can get one or two weekends a year” at most of the San Diego-area hospitals, Mr. Edwards says. “This [Brady] donation is going to help us all across the board.”

Fresh Start is now negotiating with a local surgery center for four operating rooms, and is planning to hire more people to recruit additional medical volunteers and to manage caseloads better.

Ms. Brady, who trained as an artist, worked in the fashion industry and in real estate before her marriage to William T. Brady. Mr. Brady was one of the founders of Corn Products Refining Company, which eventually became Unilever Bestfoods North America. He died in 1984.

The Bradys made numerous charitable gifts, but Ms. Brady, who had no children of her own, seemed to have a special affection for young people.

“My aunt always loved children and we all knew she wanted to do something big,” her nephew, Paul Brady, told the North County Times when the bequest for Fresh Start was announced last year. “Our entire family supported Jeanne’s decision to support this charity.”