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Doris W. York’s father did not believe that women should go to college, nor did he help her to pay her tuition. But that didn’t keep her from gaining a college education — or from helping other young women to do the same.
On March 15, 1912, York (MET’37) was born Doris Yirovec, to a Czech immigrant father, according to an article in the Somerville (Massachusetts) Journal. The Yirovecs (they later changed their name to York) lived in Somerville, as Doris would her entire life. She graduated from Somerville High School in 1929, and then, against her father’s wishes, attended Portia Law School, now the New England School of Law, struggling to pay her own way. After receiving a Bachelor of Laws degree from Portia in 1933 and taking several accounting courses at Boston University’s Metropolitan College between 1935 and 1937, York became a bank executive at the United States Trust Company in Boston. Throughout her adult life, she invested in tax-free municipal bonds, amassing an estate worth $4 million. Devoted to promoting higher education, for women in particular, York in 1990 cofounded the Somerville High School Scholarship Foundation, a chapter of the national nonprofit organization Scholarship American. She died in October 2004 at the age of ninety-two, leaving $1.9 million — nearly half her estate — to establish the Doris W. York Scholarship at Boston University, and funded a similar scholarship at Tufts University.
BU’s Doris W. York Scholarship will be awarded annually, beginning this fall, to a Somerville High School woman graduating in the top fifth of her class. Each awardee must have lived in Somerville for all four years of high school and must demonstrate financial need. To keep the scholarship, she must maintain a 3.0 grade point average throughout her studies at BU, except for a one-semester grace period. The award will fund eight semesters of full-time study, with no restrictions on the field. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for our students,” Carolyn Richards, supervisor of guidance and testing for Somerville Public Schools, told the Somerville Journal. “I think it’s consistent with who she was. Apparently, for her time, she was a very liberal thinker and a very avant-garde woman.”
“She set her will up twenty years ago to create these scholarships, and I helped her add a codicil to make sure the money went to women,” says James Nelligan, York’s attorney. “It was sort of a payback to her father because he didn’t believe she should go to college, never mind law school. Plus, she was a real advocate for women throughout her life. She was delighted that she could do this.”
— Kelly Cunningham
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