Neumann Gift Funds New Scholarships for Teacher Education

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Neumann have donated approximately $1.5 million to the Graduate School of Education to establish the Helen Murphy Neumann Teachers Scholarships for the purposes of providing financial aid to education students at UC Berkeley who want to become teachers. Helen and Andrew Neumann, who are 100 and 99 years old respectively, both attended Cal at different times and both have a deep concern for the future of education and its importance in providing opportunity. "It was born in me that I was interested in education," said Mrs. Neumann. GSE Dean P. David Pearson said of their gift, "The School is grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Neumann for their great generosity, and I salute them for their foresight in supporting education."

Helen Neumann grew up on a farm near Watsonville, at a time when children rode billy goat carts to school. The local school teacher traveled by steam train down from San Francisco to give instruction during the week. "She boarded at our farm because we lived near the school. The teachers always wore high-collared white blouses and dark skirts back then," she recalled. Helen Neumann went on to attend Cal and graduated in the class of 1922 with a teaching credential. After graduation she traveled seven days on a single-stack ocean liner to teach on a plantation on Maui, where many of the students were from families that didn' t speak English at home. Her memories of those days are positive: "The families were hard-working and were eager for their children to get an education. In the evenings we' d go down to the beach and the young Hawaiian men would play ukeleles and we' d dance on the hard sand." She later taught in both New York State and in San Jose.

Andrew Neumann was born in San Francisco a few years before the 1906 quake. He attended Cal later in life when he went back to study engineering in the 1940s. Married in 1929, Andrew and Helen maintain a close relationship, enhanced by 72 years of memories together.

"I' d encourage others to give money to this department," Helen Neumann said. "Education is so important-the world' s future depends on it."

Andrew Neumann and Helen Murphy Neumann