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SOHO President's Bi-Monthly Message
May/June 2017
By Jaye MacAskill
 Spring is a great time to get out and visit historic sites. The flowers are flourishing, the sun is brilliant, and the temperatures are still relatively mild. It's good timing that May also happens to be National Preservation Month!
While many personal New Year's resolutions may have already fallen by the wayside, spring's welcome arrival offers another chance to make the most of what remains of the year ahead. With its increasing daylight hours, the season has a way of instilling optimism. You may feel inspired to take on new projects, such as volunteering at a favorite house museum, tackling some much needed home restoration work, or finally completing a nomination report for a historic register listing. If you've been putting something off, spring seems to be the easiest, gentlest time of year to finally get it done.
As SOHO's board president, I'd like to suggest doing something really important to celebrate National Preservation Month, meanwhile, supporting our shared, long-term values: estate planning. Indeed, year after year, making a future financial plan is something many of us avoid. However, not only is estate planning the responsible thing to do, it is also a way of ensuring that you will continue to make a positive difference in the world by donating all or a portion of your wealth to a non-profit organization such as SOHO.
In recent years, SOHO has been fortunate to have been named a beneficiary of some substantial financial gifts left by long-time SOHO members. While it is always sad and difficult to lose one of our dear friends, there is no bigger compliment than learning that someone so deeply appreciated SOHO's work and serious spirit of camaraderie that he or she is willing to make a generous show of support. For the SOHO staff, board of directors, and volunteers, these gestures are truly humbling.
SOHO's purchase and subsequent restoration of the 1890s Hoover Barn in Santa Ysabel was made possible by a gift of the Phyllis Paul estate. A resident of Rancho Santa Fe and former president of its historical society, Phyllis loved the backcountry, giving us confidence that she would have approved of the use of some of her funds for such a major preservation undertaking.
SOHO relies on many donors to support our legal fund when there is a specific preservation call-to-action. We also appreciate those who make a legal fund donation when they renew their memberships. With Phyllis Paul, who died in 2013, and Judith Bond, a member of an early San Diego family long associated with George Marston and who died in 2010, their estate gifts supported SOHO's legal challenges as well.
SOHO was founded with an urgent commitment to saving San Diego's vanishing historic architecture. As we approach our 50-year anniversary, sadly, not much has changed in the ongoing, fervent efforts to preserve our heritage. It certainly hasn't gotten any easier. On the contrary, with current major battles to save Balboa Park, the California Theatre, and neighborhood historic character in older communities, such as Hillcrest and Mission Hills, it would seem the stakes have gotten higher, the oppositional forces ever more powerful and unscrupulous.
To have the resources to effectively wage these and future legal battles while maintaining our historic sites and educational programming, SOHO will need more thoughtful and generous people like Judith Bond and Phyllis Paul to be willing to put their confidence in us and include us in their estate planning.
In the spirit of springtime and National Preservation Month, and on behalf of SOHO, I encourage you to think about the future and what matters to you. San Diego still is, thanks in great part to SOHO, a wealth of historic buildings and sites that define our city and region, making it both a great place to live and a memorable place to visit. If you would like to ensure these treasures remain for the benefit of many more generations, please consider including SOHO in your estate, and start making those plans today. For more information or to discuss possibilities for legacy giving, please contact Bruce Coons, SOHO's Executive Director, at (619) 297-9327 or SOHOsandiego@aol.com. Thank you.
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