Kurt and Marilyn Metzl: Creating Opportunity and Hope for Future Generations
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Kurt and Marilyn Metzl deeply and passionately understood that opportunity empowers dreams. It’s therefore fitting that the Kurt & Marilyn Metzl Endowment Fund at the HIAS Foundation provides loans to refugees who want to start a business.
Born in Austria in 1935, Kurt’s life was upended by Nazism. Although many members of his extended family were killed, Kurt and his parents escaped to Switzerland in 1938. After living in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, as displaced persons for ten years, they came to America and were resettled to Kansas City as HIAS-assisted refugees.
Kurt’s parents eventually opened a small kosher meat market whose customers were always encouraged to contribute spare change to Kurt’s medical school fund.
Jamie, Kurt’s son, says, “When people would come into the butcher shop and ask, ‘how much is the sandwich,’ my grandmother would say, ‘it's 25 cents for the sandwich, and five cents for Kurt's medical school fund.’ ”
A star student, Kurt graduated at the top of high school and college classes then attended the University of Kansas medical school. In New York City for his pediatrics residency, he met Marilyn Sue Newman. The pair quickly became inseparable and wed after a whirlwind courtship.
Kurt and Marilyn were deeply patriotic Americans and extremely grateful for the opportunities afforded by the United States. They became leading contributors to civic life in Kansas City and nationally. Kurt provided free medical care to those unable to pay and became a leading voice in the American Academy of Pediatrics. Marilyn thrived as a psychologist and psychoanalyst and became a leader of the American Psychological Association and the Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. Both were avid skiers and bikers, devoted (and colorful) parents and grandparents, and courageous freethinkers who engaged and empowered everyone around them.
When exploring possibilities for a legacy gift, Kurt and Marilyn Metzl wanted to create opportunity and hope to help future generations of new Americans realize their dreams.
When asked why his parents, with support from the entire family, chose the HIAS Foundation for their endowment, Jamie says, “HIAS is representing the best of Jewish values: to look out for and care for the people in greatest need. Judaism isn't about keeping kosher. It's not about a bunch of little rules. At its core, Judaism is about living a highly ethical life, and that requires internalizing our responsibilities for everybody else—starting with the most vulnerable. In my mind, HIAS embodies that set of principles.”
Kurt and Marilyn’s sons, Jonathan, Jordan, Jamie, and Joshua, hope their parents’ endowment fund will help people follow the same arc as their father, “of starting out in a position where you need help and ending up in a position where you have the opportunity to help others.”
Jamie sums it up like this, “This endowment means a great deal to our family. Our dad never took a moment of life for granted. In many ways, just surviving creates its own responsibility because there were so many wonderful people with so much to contribute who were killed and didn't have that opportunity. My father and my mother lived their whole lives internalizing that sense of responsibility. It’s only fitting their legacy should continue helping many future generations.”
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