The Alma Gray Legacy Society

The Alma Gray Legacy Society, named after Meadowbrook’s first Head of School, Alma Gray, recognizes a dedicated group of alumni, families, and friends who wish to make a lasting impact on Meadowbrook’s future by providing critical long-term funding for the school.

When you make a gift to Meadowbrook through your will, retirement assets, insurance policy, or another planned giving vehicle, we honor your generosity and vision through automatic membership in The Alma Gray Legacy Society.

A planned or estate gift is a powerful demonstration of your belief in the importance of a Meadowbrook education and can provide financial and tax benefits for you and your family. You can choose to make an unrestricted gift or to designate your planned gift for a particular passion area or purpose, including faculty support and professional development, financial assistance, student programming, and facilities.

Members of The Alma Gray Legacy Society help secure a brighter future for Meadowbrook and ensure that we will live our mission to know, love, and challenge generations of students to come.

The Rev. Sasha Childs ’73

After visiting Meadowbrook recently, Sasha says, “This is still how the school is training its teachers and the vision that the school is building its legacy on. arvind understands that if there isn’t a philosophy about how to work with children, as well as attracting great educators and supporting them with great training, then you can’t cultivate the children into the stars they naturally are.” 

Looking back, Sasha says she was able to excel and grow confident because of the Meadowbrook teachers who truly cared about her and her family. She felt known and heard, and she can recall minute details of her first art projects and performances as the school supported and inspired her creativity.

Sasha went on to obtain a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and later a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California. She is ordained in the United Church of Christ, as a traveling minister of the arts. She creates visual spaces as reflections of the theme and narrative of a service, which are as beautiful as they are transformative. She designs large-scale environments for UCC national assemblies, as well as elaborate visuals for her church in Alameda.

Looking ahead to future generations at Meadowbrook, Sasha felt called to become an inaugural member of the school’s new Alma Gray Legacy Society this past year by including Meadowbrook in her will. The society recognizes all who make a bequest, gift of life insurance, or other planned gift to support the school.

She says, “Making a bequest is an easy thing to do and doesn’t cost anything now. It concretized my priority for supporting Meadowbrook into the future. They helped me find a way in the world that reflects who I am, so I could express my creativity and be of service. Meadowbrook loved me—and what could be more important than investing in the future of children’s lives?”

Ethan and Maly Bernstein, Parents

Ethan and Maly’s sons, Covell ’27 and Clayton ’32, started at Meadowbrook in Junior Kindergarten. Ethan says, “The faculty keep our boys intellectually fed, all while respecting their developmental level. They tailor the environment to each child and truly see them as individuals.”

As a professor in the field of organizational behavior, Ethan invests a great deal in helping his graduate students make progress in their careers and lives—“and I love that Meadowbrook doesn’t wait to teach our children what some of my students say they wish they had learned much earlier.”

Ethan explains that he and Maly support The Meadowbrook Fund each year because they know the cost of providing a great education exceeds the tuition charged. Ethan also recently included the school in his will, becoming one of the first members of Meadowbrook’s new Alma Gray Legacy Society. The society recognizes all who make a bequest or other planned gift to support long-term needs at the school.

He says, “I added Meadowbrook to my estate plan because, with Covell and Clayton at the school for 10 years each, there will be no other educational institution that will have more years of influence on their generation of our family than Meadowbrook. It is already part of our legacy; inclusion in my estate plan seemed to be a way to amplify that legacy for Clayton and Covell.”

His gift reflects the lifelong value of the faculty and community relationships at Meadowbrook.

“I still have yet to hear a more concise way to state the optimal conditions under which learning happens than ‘know, love, and challenge.’ It’s what brought us to Meadowbrook, and it’s what we cherish in every interaction there.”