Posted on March 14, 2023
As a child, Mary Buletza (Questrom’80) had dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. But she was a few decades too early with that ambition. As the fourth of six children, she says, “I didn’t have a choice to go to school and just do whatever I wanted. I needed to have a skill, a livelihood. I needed to support myself afterwards.”
So she came to BU as a business student instead, then went on to a successful career as a tax accountant. And she’s glad she did.
“I love my career,” says Mary. “I’ve loved the opportunities that my schooling at Boston University gave me. I just look at the opportunity that BU gave me, and the trust and faith it had in me to take the education and do a good job with it. That meant the world to me. My way to thank them now is by giving it forward and trying to help out somebody else.”
Has she ever. In addition to endowing funds for both graduate and undergraduate financial aid, Mary gives generously on Giving Day—and is among BU’s strongest advocates for encouraging her fellow Terriers to do the same.
“Think back on all those great times you had at Boston University, and think of how much of your life has been affected by your time at BU,” she says. “You know how much better your life’s been because of that. And are you able to help make that a possibility for someone else?”
For Giving Day 2023, which takes place on April 11, Mary will be joined by a new cohort of dedicated supporters: the BU Giving Day Ambassadors. After signing up on the Giving Day site, ambassadors will receive a toolkit with everything they need to help spread the word. They’ll also get a personalized URL to share, so that the leaderboard can track every gift that comes in through their efforts.
It’s an easy way to get involved, even for those who can only give a small amount.
“It doesn’t matter if you can only give $23 because it’s 2023, or you can give $10 a month,” Mary says. “Every little bit helps.”
Learn about becoming an ambassador
Mary gives to a variety of causes at BU, but she’s particularly devoted to supporting Athletics.
That might be a bit surprising since she didn’t play sports herself.
“I did sailing, dance classes; I was the statistician for club softball,” she says. “But I was a fan”—especially of hockey. She did go to a football game, but when this Midwesterner asked when the homecoming game was, the guy next to her replied, “Sweetheart, if you don’t wear skates, it’s not worth watching.”
So she eventually became a season ticket holder for Men’s Hockey. But when it came time to endow a scholarship, she didn’t limit herself to the ice.
“Let’s call it a free agent,” she says. “I’m pretty flexible as to who needs support.”
Mary’s flexibility, and the scholarship she endowed with her husband, Gary Breton, has provided a wonderful opportunity for a number of student-athletes in different sports, from golf to basketball—and most recently Sophie Ehrhardt (ENG’25), a member of the varsity Women’s Rowing team.
Born in New Zealand, Sophie moved with her family to Washington, DC, when she was 6. Because “the cost of college here is sort of prohibitive to a lot of people, including me,” she says, “I would have just gone to school in New Zealand had I not got my scholarship here. I would just be in a completely different place in my life.”
She’s much happier to be at BU. “Collegiate sports in New Zealand are just so different from what they are here,” Sophie says, “because there’s no scholarships involved in New Zealand. Everybody has to be like completely self-motivated, and you can’t demand as much from the athletes because you know everybody’s just doing it completely by choice.”
Here, it’s another story entirely—and that’s one of the things she loves most about BU. When she was looking at colleges, she says, she was impressed with BU coach Madeline Davis. “I really appreciated the way she thinks about the sport, and the style of rowing here at BU,” Sophie says. “What she was describing is how everybody was really competitive, really wanted to win. And for me that’s so important. Obviously, you know, we all love the sport. But as competitive athletes, it’s really important that we’re competitive, you know? It connects us and makes us more successful.”
The same sense of competitive drive motivates Sophie in her academic pursuits. “The biomedical engineering program here is one of the best in the country, better than all the other schools I was looking at,” she says. “It’s really fantastic—and much bigger than most other programs.”
She hopes to use what she’s learning here to launch a career in biomedical research and development, and she’s grateful that the Buletza-Breton Scholarship has made her education possible. “BU’s a really, really excellent school for so many reasons, and all my friends pretty much have athletic aid to be here,” says Sophie. “Just knowing that we’ve all been able to have this opportunity because of athletic aid is really important.”