McMURRAN, ROY R. CHARLES TRUST GIFTS SUPPORT

    
April 23, 2007         

McMURRAN, ROY R. CHARLES TRUST GIFTS SUPPORT
JAMESTOWN-YORKTOWN FOUNDATION EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

 WILLIAMSBURG, Va.--Mr. and Mrs. Lewis A. McMurran III of Newport News have created the Lewis A. McMurran, Jr. Summer Teachers’ Institute with an endowment commitment of $500,000 to “The Campaign for Jamestown Settlement, 1607-2007.”  Institutes funded by the endowment will provide educators with academic background and instructional strategies relating to English influence on American government and culture in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

The endowment honors Mr. McMurran’s father, founding chairman of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, the Virginia state agency that operates Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center.  As a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Lewis A. McMurran, Jr., was instrumental in the creation of the Virginia 350th Anniversary Commission in 1954 and served as its chairman.  He continued as chairman of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation until 1986 and was chairman emeritus at the time of his death in 1989.

A gift of $100,000 from the Roy R. Charles Charitable Trust of Richmond will support the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s curriculum-based outreach programs in classrooms throughout Virginia.  An earlier campaign gift from the Trust supported reconstruction of the Anglican church at Jamestown Settlement’s re-created early 17th-century English fort. 

Gifts and grants to the “Campaign for Jamestown Settlement, 1607-2007” of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc., support artifact acquisition and conservation, new exhibit features, educational programming, special exhibitions, and endowment and annual funds to ensure future excellence.  The campaign has reached 85 percent of its $24.2-million goal.  For more information, call (757) 253-4139.