Dynamic describes resident Lyle Guell, who became a Legacy member in 2011. She elected to participate in the gift annuity program - an excellent way to combine personal benefits and philanthropy. Lyle has been active since moving to Casa in September of 2006, and currently serves on the Activities, Welcoming and Scholarship committees. She is a past Chair of the Ladies Luncheon Club and was the 2010 Chair for the Employee Appreciation Fund drive. Lyle just completed five years of tutoring Korean students in ESL and also helps out in the Resale Room when possible. In addition to extensive traveling abroad with her husband, Ed, in retirement, Lyle has lived in ten different states and seventeen cities while growing up and then as a military wife raising four children. As a volunteer, she was active with the Navy Relief Society when her husband was on active duty. Lyle loved winter sports as a young girl, including tobogganing, ice boating, ice carnivals and skating. In fact, she was a speed-skater in a skating club that competed in upper Michigan and Wisconsin. One can easily visualize that red hair churning up the ice.
Lyle describes her family as close and enjoys time as a grandmother of eight and a great grandmother of ten. She is no stranger to military life. Her husband was a career pilot with the US Marine Corp and her father a Marine in WWI. A son-in-law served in the Marine Corp in Vietnam and she has a grandson-in-law that has done two tours in Iraq as a helicopter pilot. After a successful career as a military wife and mother, Lyle decided to try her hand at real estate and was a successful real estate broker for 22 years. It must have been a good fit. Lyle’s recommendations for a great life include honesty, dedication and volunteering. If she could do anything over - she said she would work 10 years!
For information on how you can participate, contact Jim Eckel at 858-592-1898.
Many of you know Pat Heath who moved to Casa in 2007. Pat became a Legacy Society member in December of 2013 and currently chairs the Foundation Education Sub-committee. We are blessed to have the benefit of her input and guidance. Pat has had a long love affair with books.When she was only 8, she received the honor of having read more books during the year than any child of her age in Philadelphia (150). Pat attended Temple University in Philadelphia where she received her B.S. in Journalism. While there, she met and married her college sweetheart and had 2 sons and 1 daughter. After raising her family, she returned to school and obtained a masters in Library Science from UCLA and spent 15 years as a librarian for the Palos Verdes School District. Fortunately for Casa, Pat joined the Sur Library committee shortly after moving to Casa and became its chair in 2009, a position she still holds today. She appreciates the friendliness of Casa residents and encourages others to live each day to the fullest.
Pat loves to travel, and after the death of her husband in 1999 she and her daughter started cruising each year and have been all over the world together. She also still enjoys golfing, is a member of the Casa Golf Club and plays every week with the ladies golf group at Oaks North Golf Course. She especially enjoys following the career of her new grand-daughter-inlaw, LPGA golfer, Paula Creamer. Pat became a Legacy Society member by participating in our charitable gift annuity program, which provides her with lifetime income and will ultimately benefit the Casa Foundation. For information on how a charitable gift annuity can benefit you personally, contact Jim Eckel in the Foundation office at: 858-592-1898.
Ethel Neichin is one of the most “involved in life” residents I know. She and her husband Stan, who passed away in 2003, moved here in 1998, so if you need to know something about Casa’s past, she is a person who probably knows. Ethel was a math major, working initially with the US Army Corps of Engineers and then with private firms during her career. Casa was also lucky to have her expertise as the Resident Association Treasurer and on the Finance Committee for many years. During their working years, Stan & Ethel spent a lot of time in the Far East, where they enjoyed the fascinating environment and mixing with people of many backgrounds. World travelers they were. Currently Ethel serves on the Foundation Advisory Committee and is the Secretary of the Foundation Board of Directors. Over the years, she has also been involved with the Marketing Committee, the CRE, the Building Committee, the Windows Computer Club, and the Major Project’s Committee to name a few. Before moving to Casa, she and Stan volunteered for the US Power Squadron, teaching boating safety, seamanship, navigation, and sailing. They were also volunteers at Sharp Memorial Hospital.
Ethel has a son in Minneapolis, one in Fairfield, CT and two grandsons. She frequently visits the snowy parts of the country during the holidays. She and Stan became Legacy members in 2002 by participating in our charitable gift annuity program, which she highly recommends as a beneficial arrangement for participants as well as the Foundation. Appreciating the benefits, they later did two more gift annuities. A desire to help Casa continue as a great place, not only for themselves but for future residents, motivated them to join. For more information about how a gift annuity might benefit you, contact Jim Eckel in the Foundation office at 858-592-1898.
Legacy members, Norm and Pat Gillespie, are a delightful and engaging couple in every way. Their days are full enjoying volunteering, reading, walking, swimming, physical fitness, travel, theatre, tennis and people. They appreciate Casa for its supportive environment, its friendly residents, and of course the fabulous food! Both were born in the midwest during the depression, Norm in Flint, Michigan, and Pat in Chicago. They appreciated their families and embraced the values of hard work and honesty. In 1945, Norm joined the Navy where he took the rear seat in dive bombers and torpedo bombers as an aviation electronics technician. Norm and Pat met at Purdue University and married after graduation on February 25, 1956, Norm with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Pat with a B.S. in Home Economics & Textile Merchandising. Norm enjoyed work as a systems engineer for Honeywell in Minneapolis and later worked on aircraft and space programs after they moved to the West Coast. He retired from Ryan Aeronautical in 1993. Pat was employed in the fashion industry in Chicago before marriage and then enjoyed time as a homemaker, Cub Scout den mother, adult ed teacher and school librarian.
Norm and Pat are very proud of their family, which includes their son, Scott, his wife Vicki and grandson Daniel, and their son, Peter, his wife Cheryl and grandson Cole. Daniel is in the Coast Guard Academy and Cole will be attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to study aerospace engineering. Norm and Pat became Legacy members with a pledge, which is a great way to make outright contributions over time to one or more areas of interest. Call Jim Eckel in the Foundation at 858-592-1898 for details on how a pledge might satisfy your charitable giving goals.
Fun-Den and Agnes Wang became Legacy Society members in 2013 by establishing a Scholarship Endowment. They are as passionate and devoted to the importance of education as someone can be and have demonstrated this through support of higher education for students in China as well as the United States. Fun-Den and Agnes have been married for 54 years and got their education in China and Taiwan through college. They both attended the University of Illinois in the early sixties where both received their Ph.D. degrees, Fun-Den in mining engineering and Agnes in chemistry. They felt fortunate to have received assistantships from the university all through their graduate school years at a time of abundant scientific research support by the government. Upon graduation, Agnes held research positions at three universities while Fun-Den worked six years for the U.S. Bureau of Mines before becoming a faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines until his retirement as a professor emeritus. He received many awards for his engineering research and was named an honorary professor at four Chinese universities. In 1993, Fun-Den and Agnes established the IET Foundation to support education. Initially, they began supporting Chinese students as they needed the financial assistance and had a harder time going to college; especially in rural areas. Now, with more government support in China, the Wangs have been able to provide support for both foreign and US scholarship programs. We appreciate what they are doing here at Casa for students. If you would like to consider leaving a legacy through a scholarship endowment, call Jim Eckel at 858-592-1898. We currently have 11 scholarship endowments which are listed in the article below about the scholarship appeal.
