The Miki Young Charitable Trust
/Museum Surprised with Legacy Gift
The Museum was informed last summer of the passing of one of our longstanding Museum friends and donors, Miki Young of Orange County. Over the years she made regular donations between $500 and $1,000. The trustees of her estate informed us that upon her passing she set up a permanent charitable trust to benefit five charities: USC School of Engineering, Cal Tech, The Red Cross, The Laguna Playhouse, and The International Printing Museum. The charities were chosen because of Miki’s love for arts education and the sciences. Her professional background was in engineering. She and her husband founded an aerospace company in Orange County, The Young Engineers, Inc., still in operation today. Miki was still going into work every day up to the age of 94!
It would be an understatement to say that Miki’s trustees were perplexed as to why The International Printing Museum, a small and obscure non-profit, was on this list. On a phone call with Mark, the trustees speculated that Miki discovered The Printing Museum when it was featured on Huell Howser’s “California Gold” TV show. Mark chuckled a bit and gave the trustees the background as to why Miki had been connected to the Museum for over 25 years. One of Miki’s close friends, Patricia Hausmann was a wood engraving artist in Pasadena. When Pat set out to buy a printing press for her engravings, she met Mark at the Printing Museum. Mark learned that Pat was the last student of the very famous Southern California wood engraving artist Paul Landacre in the early 1960’s. Landacre was a major artist in the 20th century California Fine Printing community; the 19th century Washington Press he used to print his famous engravings is part of the Museum collection.
Miki visited the Printing Museum regularly with her friend Pat, thoroughly enjoying our educational classes, tours and presentations. Miki Young made consistent annual donations to the Museum over the years, but the notification that she had remembered the Printing Museum in her estate planning came as a complete surprise. Her overwhelming generous gift through the Miki Young Charitable Trust will become over time, the largest gift to the Printing Museum. Miki stated that she really loved our educational programs and work with children, wanting to support our endeavors in perpetuity. We were set to meet with the three trustees in March for an initial site visit, but had to cancel due to the shutdown. They re-contacted us in June, realizing that due to the shutdown and loss of program revenue, The Printing Museum and The Laguna Playhouse were probably in very tight circumstances; Miki’s gift would be critical for this year. Mark was able to give the trustees a virtual tour of the Museum, bring them up to speed on Miki’s relationship with the Museum, and describe all of our educational programs and tours. He also updated them on all the work done at the Museum since March to improve the facilities, explore new ways of programming, develop online tours and educational opportunities, build our new Book Arts Institute, moving the Museum forward even in a challenging year. They were very impressed with what the Museum has accomplished over the last 30 years, and all our initiatives and work at present.
In September, the Miki Young Charitable Trust made a gift of $150,000 to help cover the Museum’s lost program revenue for 2020 due to the pandemic shutdown. With this amazing gift, what would have been one of our most difficult and financially challenging years has been turned around to being one of our better years. Miki Young demonstrated how much benefit can come through estate planning, whether it is large such as hers, or even something small like $5,000. Estate gifts are what will give permanence to the The Printing Museum and its mission. Thank you Miki for being our Angel this year!
