Family connections encourage gift for CHE program scholarship

Peggie Toomey Notarianni has always had an interest in promoting health. After graduating from the University of Minnesota's dental hygiene program in 1950, the Minneapolis native moved to Denver to work in private practice and then in a program to teach nutrition and proper tooth-brushing techniques to schoolchildren.

She spent an additional 25 years volunteering for Kids in Need of Dentistry, a program that provides low-cost dental care to children in low-income families. Several years later, Peggie and her husband, Aldo Notarianni, learned about the work Traci Toomey was doing in the School of Public Health's Division of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Peggie was especially interested in the division's Community Health Education (CHE) program, for which Toomey is the major chair.

"I like that idea--getting out into the community and promoting healthful behavior," Peggie says. "Being that I was a dental hygienist, it rang a bell with me. It's a need that I see in our society."

After learning more about the program, the Notariannis decided to make a $50,000 bequest to fund a scholarship for students in the CHE program.

"Bequests such as this are key to building our students' futures in public health," says SPH Dean John Finnegan. "We compete with many schools that have excellent community health education programs, and a gift like this will provide us with a little more leverage to bring the best and the brightest students to Minnesota."

The Notariannis first learned about the CHE program and Toomey's work through Toomey's father, who is one of Peggie's cousins.

"Traci sounded so much like our eldest daughter, Elissa," Peggie says. "Their paths in life were so similar."

Elissa (Notarianni) Rivers also had an interest in health, following her mother's footsteps to the University of Minnesota and earning a doctorate in anatomy. She was a cancer researcher and teacher before she died of breast cancer in 1997. The Notariannis contacted Traci Toomey to learn more about her work. In the process, they became more aware of the need to educate people to take care of their own health and made a planned gift for a scholarship for CHE students, called the Aldo G. and Peggie Toomey Notarianni Scholarship.

The Notariannis are making a similar scholarship gift to the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry's Dental Hygiene Program. They've also established scholarship funds in Elissa's memory at both Regis University and Red Rocks Community College in Denver, where Elissa taught before her death.

"Aldo and our four children received scholarships to go to college based on their academics," Peggie says. "We're very grateful, and now it is payback time for all that has been given to our family by earlier benefactors."

The Notariannis also chose to fund a scholarship because of rising tuition costs. Aldo, who is retired after a 53-year career in law, remembers paying $650--total--for his college education in the 1940s. Peggie remembers paying $150 per year at the University.

"Now it's so different," says Peggie. "Aldo and I have been so blessed in our early life. We're trying to help other students have what we had."