A Wise Soul
Robert M. Perry, Published 1994 (unverified)
When Carl Solberg first mentioned the name of Albert Roothbert to me, it was a reference to an older man who had an excess of money. Having grown up as a middle-class American, I took it for granted that money existed for the paying of bills. If you had extra, you rang up another bill. But Albert Roothbert was a different case. He obviously “couldn’t take it with him” and he wanted to do something significant with his accumulated funds. To be sure, the International Revenue Service had a solution to his problem: simply transfer the amount to them and trust that they would use it wisely. Another avenue was based on the gospel teaching—give it to the poor. Organized charities would be delighted to handle the matter.
But no, the money should be used in a way that was spiritually significant. By this time Carl had arranged for me to meet Mr. and Mrs. Roothbert and I began to see that we were in an altogether different sphere. Here was an elderly man who, like so many others, had come to New York as a young man in order to succeed. And as a banker he had succeeded remarkably well. He married rather late in life and never had children. What do you do? You invest, you buy property, you seek valuable things. It must be remembered that at this time in the world’s history our earth was just recovering from a horror where millions had been spent on destruction and hate. Could the world’s means and energies be directed to a positive good? Could gentle spirits—instead of warriors—be nourished? Where does one start?
Naturally and historically, the world’s religious organizations seemed an obvious solution. Christianity—Albert Schwietzer. Hinduism—Gandhi. Mrs. Roothbert was interested in Buddhism. But Albert was not a professing Christian. He was not a Buddhist. He was a Jew. But certainly not an orthodox Jew. He was by this time a New York Jew of German background. Politically liberal, involved in the arts, erudite, cultured, sensitive. Where does such a person, shy but determined, find a connection between his personal wealth and the spiritually gifted and promising?
The board of directors, as we were by that time, concurred that the American college seemed a likely place. We wrote to college presidents explaining our quest. A few answered. Eventually, three people applied for and were granted scholarship aid. The Roothbert Fund was an actuality.