Mary Pearson grew up in the Great Depression.
Her father, a farmer, didn’t have money to buy her and her twin sister dresses to go to their high school graduation party. So they stayed home.
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| Mary Pearson and her late husband, Roy, both rose from poor childhoods to a prosperity that they later used to support efforts such as ophthalmology research at UNMC. |
That was one of her worst days.
“I vowed that day that I would never be so poor that I didn’t have the proper clothes to wear,” the Holdrege woman says.
A day in December 1948 was one of her best days.
That was the day she answered a “help wanted” ad in the Holdrege newspaper and went to work for Roy Pearson, the man who would become her business mentor and, years later, her husband.
Read a story from the University of Nebraska Foundation about Roy and Mary’s generosity to UNMC.