Around $1M donated to library
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According to the will, after some other bequests, the majority of Moffitt’s estimated $2.8 million estate will be divided equally between an MTSU scholarship fund for Warren County students and Magness Library.
Will executors say settling Moffitt’s estate is still several months away, but library officials are expecting the amount to be around $1 million.
Library board chairman Pat Bigbee said the news was an unexpected, but much-appreciated, blessing for the historic establishment which opened its doors in 1931.
“The members of the Magness Memorial Library board regret the death of Gentry Moffitt,” Bigbee said. “We have recently learned the library may be the recipient of his generous bequest. We are unsure of the amount to be received and have just begun to consider how his gift may be best used in library services to the people of Warren County.”
Bigbee said the bequest should go a long way to making the library a state-of-the-art facility the community can use well into the future.
As to why Moffitt made the gift, Bigbee said she was told Moffitt had once said he spent many happy hours in the library as a child and it had a special place in his heart. Bigbee also said the bequest will require some careful thought as to how it will be used.
“We’ve got to do a lot of deliberation,” she said. “We’ve got to consider a lot of things. We have to decide what’s best for the library now and in the future.”
The man who made all this possible was, by all accounts, a quiet, unassuming and retiring individual who nonetheless lived a quite adventurous life.
Gentry Ward Moffitt was the son of Lester B. and Ida May Locke Moffitt and had two sisters, Louise Moffitt and Evelyn Copeland. He grew up in Warren County and attended Middle Tennessee Teacher’s College in Murfreesboro, which became MTSU, and got his bachelor of science degree there in 1935. He received his master’s degree in 1940 from George Peabody college in Nashville, and then an MPH in 1953 from Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Md.
Moffitt was in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, serving as a medic in Guam and the Phillippines. After leaving the service, he went on to become a Microbiologist with the Tennessee Department of Public Health in Nashville, eventually rising to the position of director.
Niece Betty Sue Borth, a Warren County native who now resides in Kansas, remembers her uncle as someone who believed strongly in the importance of education.
“He started out in education,” Borth said. “He was a teacher. He taught at Centertown and he taught at a junior college in Iowa.”
While teaching in Iowa, Moffitt was drafted into WWII. Once he left the service, he stayed in the reserves and retired with the rank of Lt. Colonel.
Borth, the daughter of Evelyn Copeland, has fond memories of her uncle.
“I called him ‘unkie,'” Borth said. “Unkie was a scholar and placed great stock in education. He realized that knowledge was power. His family was number one, and he was a very generous provider for them.
“He also wanted to help others through education, and his bequest was made out of this generosity and his love of mankind. He wanted Warren County residents to benefit from his financial success.”
Library board member and longtime supporter Marvin Campen said the bequest was a real boon.
“I think it’s wonderful. It’s the greatest thing that’s happened (for the library) in my life,” Campen said. “We’re going to spend it very wisely.”
Campen said Magness Library is a very big part of the history of Warren County and he is thrilled it will remain so for a long time to come.