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$1 million donation by Cadwgans to help Alpha-1 Foundation "find new therapies and ultimately, a cure"
Ruth and Gordon E. Cadwgan, Jr., made a surprise announcement at this past weekend’s national education conference in Orlando: the donation of a million dollars to the Alpha-1 Foundation from themselves and Gordon Cadwgan, Sr.
Gordon Cadwgan, Jr. explained the timing of the family’s donation for Alpha-1 research. It came up in a recent conversation between father and son: “My dad, who’s 96, said, ‘I want to make a difference while I’m still here!”
Gordon Jr. says about his dad: “He is so grateful for the generosity that made his success possible, it’s led him to be very generous with his own wealth.”
Gordon E. Cadwgan, Jr., PhD, 65, was a chemist and researcher for DuPont. He took early retirement after doctors diagnosed him with lung disease due to Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. He is currently an Alpha-1 Foundation Board member and serves on the Foundation’s Development Committee.
Gordon and Ruth Cadwgan live in West Palm Beach, FL, and are the co-leaders of the Alpha-1 support group in the area. They have attended nearly all of the Alpha-1 Association’s national education conferences.
Previously, Gordon Cadwgan served on the Foundation’s Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Working Group. He is also a trustee of the Board of Directors of his family’s charitable foundation.
Ruth Cadwgan also serves on the Foundation Development Committee. Besides being an Alpha-1 caregiver, she has been active in many fundraising and awareness projects, as well as the Alpha-1 support group. She is also a retired DuPont employee.
The elder statesman of the family is Gordon E. Cadwgan, Sr., who retired four years ago at age 92 after a long career as an investment banker. For many years, he has shared his financial success with charitable causes.
It all started nearly 80 years ago. In the early 1930s, a high school teacher named Ruth Morgan in Central Falls, Rhode Island, had a bright and hard-working student named Gordon Cadwgan. When the boy was in his early teens, his father died. To make a living, his mother had to take in boarders and make home-cooked meals that she sold to local workers. Gordon was the only male in the family and had to help support his mother and sister.
In those years of the Great Depression, Ruth Morgan did a remarkably generous thing: she put up the money so Gordon could go to Brown University in 1932. He did well academically at Brown, and received scholarships in the following years, but Morgan still gave him money to help support his family.
While still at Brown, Cadwgan began working for G.H. Walker, an investment firm in Providence, and when he graduated in 1936 he began a 70-year career as an investment banker. He moved to Boston in 1963 to establish an office there for G.H. Walker, and worked for a number of other investment firms in Boston over the next 31 years.
As an example of his generosity, he has funded, or helped to fund, two college scholarship programs. Not surprisingly, he created the Ruth Morgan Scholarship Fund at Colby College in Waterville, Maine – Ruth Morgan’s alma mater.
And in 1992, after the death of his wife, May, he created the Gordon E. Cadwgan and May R. Cadwgan Scholarship Fund at Brown, with significant contributions from several business clients. In the past 18 years, this fund has made it possible for more than 50 students with financial hardship to attend Brown.
“The Alpha-1 Foundation is tremendously grateful for this gift,” said Foundation President & CEO John Walsh. “The Cadwgans’ amazing generosity comes at a time when the Foundation is re-doubling its research efforts to help find new therapies and ultimately a cure for Alpha-1.”
