The Board of Trustees:
(from left to right) Paul Critchfield, Jose Cardenas, Sharon Harper, Laura Grafman,
Jim Bruner, Arthur DeCabooter, and Stephen Zabilski

Art DeCabooter, president of Scottsdale Community College (SCC), who was appointed lifetime trustee after the death of Robert Williams, does not remember a single negative word ever being spoken about Virginia.

She would never seek publicity for herself, and she really studied her philanthropic skills. I'd known Virginia for twenty-eight years and I never in my life saw her disheveled; she was both beautiful and unpretentious. I wonder what the Valley would be like if Virginia hadn't been here or if she hadn't been who she was.

We have a nursing program at Scottsdale Community College; I approached Virginia around 1979 or 1980 for endowed scholarships in nursing. Afterward, I heard nothing and decided to just let it be. Then one day an envelope arrived with a letter typed on an old manual typewriter and a check made out to SCC for $50,000.

Another time she telephoned out of the blue. "What's your favorite charity?" she asked. I talked to my wife, Mary, and called Virginia back. "St. Gregory's Boarding School in Oklahoma, for personal reasons," I told her. Well, she sent $5,000 for St. Gregory's. You never have something like that happen in your whole life, but that was Virginia, a unique, gracious person.

Another time, I was on Xavier's board, and we needed half a million dollars for a new building. Virginia toured Xavier, and then I went to her home and sat in her living room. She asked questions; I answered. Then Virginia said, "Well, I'll have to take it to my board, but there's only one voting member and she's sitting here in the room with you." And she wrote a check for $500,000 for an expanded wing of Xavier. She was a very shy, retiring person, never looking for attention but always interested in accountability.

She was very adept with money, very talented, and had a great sense of humor. She would often be the lead gift in a fundraising effort; she would set the bar and few people could match her support. Virginia was a solicitous, caring, insightful woman.

When Virginia Piper's estate was settled, the Trust received 590 million dollars, making it one of the hundred largest foundations in the nation and the largest in Arizona. In September 2000, the trustees officially opened the doors of the Trust with a small staff, including Judy Jolley Mohraz, PhD, who was hired as president and CEO of the Trust, and shortly thereafter Mary Jane Rynd, CPA, as the CFO. On what would have been Virginia's eighty-ninth birthday, the trustees awarded eight Cornerstone Grants totaling 41 million dollars. The grants went to a select group of organizations formerly supported by Virginia: Scottsdale Healthcare, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, Xavier College Preparatory School, Brophy College Preparatory School, Boys and Girls Clubs of Scottsdale, Phoenix Symphony, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

By 2005, three other trustees were added to create a total of seven: Sharon C. Harper, Jose A. Cardenas, and Stephen J. Zabilski. From its inception to December 30, 2007, The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust awarded more than 1,800 grants totaling more than 171 million dollars.

Intellectually curious, vibrantly interested in others, genuine in her compassion for the suffering, articulate in her advocacy of those most in need yet humble in her estimation of her own influence, Virginia did not believe that her wealth entitled her to public visibility and acclaim.

She was a woman who loved deeply and romantically, who had a great sense of gaiety and fun, and who was simple in her faith in God, a woman who came from a modest background, who was principled and hardworking, a woman who took in stray cats, kept friends for a lifetime, and honored her parents, her family, her husbands, and her faith.

Virginia's true legacy is not to be found on plaques or on lists of impressive donations. Her true legacy lies in the spirit of the hidden gift. Nonetheless, she would be pleased, even honored, if her life,the ways in which she said yes to divine stewardship,encouraged others to say yes to the higher, sometimes harder opportunities for grace in their own lives.

Virginia Critchfield Galvin Piper would probably be most pleased of all if this biography ended not with an emphasis on its subject but with one of her favorite prayers:

Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be
consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Virginia, "Little Bird"