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WENDY FAULKNER: A Legacy of Giving

 

Growing up as the daughter of missionaries in Japan and the West Indies, Wendy Faulkner always knew what it meant to be poor. Even after she became a successful businesswoman and settled in Mason, Ohio, she would regularly pack up boxes of clothing and send them to orphans and poor children whose names had passed on to her by her parents.

"She spent thousands of dollars, but no one even knew she did it," said her husband of 21 years, Lynn Faulkner. "I know she put at least one kid all the way through school."

In fact, some of her friends did not even know she was a vice president at Aon, with people working for her in several countries, because she rarely talked about it. Several thought she was a stay-at-home mom because she spent so much time with her two daughters, her husband said.

Yet she often traveled to New York and other cities, and on Sept. 11 she was attending a one-day meeting at Aon's offices in the World Trade Center.

To continue her legacy of helping children in the third world, her family has established a nonprofit group, the Wendy Faulkner Memorial Children's Foundation.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times