Sue Ferandin, executive director of the Augustine Educational Foundation, addresses guests at its annual donor appreciation reception, Sept. 19 at the Halekulani Hotel’s Hau Terrace Lanai. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
“I know every single one of you,” said Sue Ferandin to the 120 friends of Catholic schools gathered on the Halekulani Hotel’s Hau Terrace Lanai Sept. 19 as the sun slid toward the horizon beyond Waikiki Beach.
It wasn’t a boast, just a happy affirmation of the support she receives as executive director of the Augustine Educational Foundation, which provides scholarships to Hawaii Catholic school students with financial need. The gathering was the foundation’s annual donor appreciation reception.
The statement was also a confirmation of the Ferandin style: a passionate, face-to-face, heart-to-heart encounter-culture attitude, with a personal “luv ya” tagged on like an exclamation point.
“I’m feeling so blessed to be surrounded by such amazing people that support the Augustine Educational Foundation,” she said the day after the reception. It’s a sentiment she has expressed often during her 13 years with the organization.
Two particular “amazing people” the foundation gave special recognition to that evening were the late Gus and Anna Hochuli, Big Island Catholics who left a $1 million bequest to the Augustine Foundation for the benefit of students at St. Joseph Schools in Hilo. (See sidebar)
Ferandin is at ease with everyone, from humble parishioners like the Hochulis to representatives from multimillion dollar foundations to the bashful students who receive Augustine scholarships. She treats them all with equal respect and appreciation.
Her enthusiasm for the job and her exuberance tending to it didn’t let up that evening as she mingled with the guests, ushering them to the pupu tables, urging them to order fancier drinks, arranging special food requisitions for special people, and posing folks for photos.
“She is a very hard worker, willing to go above and beyond the call of duty,” said Father Gary Secor, vice president and chief executive officer of the Augustine Educational Foundation.
She is completely driven by the desire to give children the opportunity of Catholic schooling, Father Secor said, and she has the knack of attracting others “to participate and be supportive” in that goal.
“She is very good in inviting that generosity and that participation,” he said.
Ferandin’s personal contribution to the donor reception includes the handcrafting every year of elegant keepsakes for the guests. This year, she and her husband John Ferandin, a skilled woodworker, created 10 by 14 inch koa-framed mirrors with the Augustine Foundation’s apple-quilt symbol etched on the glass.
Confidence and character
The reception included welcoming remarks by Bishop Larry Silva, who is president of the Augustine Foundation, and short talks by Maj. Gen. Kelly K. McKeague, a 1977 graduate of Damien Memorial School, and Robert Nobriga, an alumnus of Christ the King School on Maui and an executive vice president and chief financial officer of Hawaii National Bank and a Kamehameha Schools trustee.
Maj. Gen. McKeague, who is commander of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, said his Catholic education enabled him to gain a four-year ROTC scholarship at Georgia Tech University.
“Because of the discipline and Christian values I learned at St. Theresa (Honolulu) and Damien,” he said he accomplished one thing in college he is “very proud of.”
“Not once did I miss a Sunday Mass,” he said. “That was important to me.”
“It was my Catholic education that gave me the tools of confidence and character” that led to becoming “a better man, a better husband, a better father,” he said.
Nobriga, recalling his days at Christ the King in Kahului, said the school provided him a “safe, comfortable environment, a rich and well-rounded academic experience” with “good solid discipline.”
Nobriga spoke as a representative of Kamehameha Schools which, with the Augustine Foundation’s assistance, distributes millions of dollars of need-based scholarship aid to hundreds of Hawaii Catholic school students of Hawaiian ancestry.
“Catholic schools play a critical role in Hawaii,” he said, and “Kamehameha Schools needs partners.”
He said that Kamehameha’s shift into “community scholarship programs” is an “important part of that educational strategy.”
Other contributions
The reception’s program also recognized the PWH Scholars Program, a multi-year $500,000 grant that was awarded in 2012 and will continue until 2017.
Through the grant, which comes to the Augustine Foundation through the efforts of the Leong family, nine selected public school students receive full four-year tuition scholarships to attend Saint Francis School, Sacred Hearts Academy or Damien Memorial. The scholarships come with personal counseling and a mentoring program.
“I love this program,” Ferandin said. “It has given me a lot of hope.”
The reception’s nine lei greeters were PWH scholarship recipients.
Edith Leong, the matriarch of the Leong family, was also acknowledged for adding $10,000 to the Jack and Edith Leong Endowment Fund, which she established several years ago.
The evening’s program also recognized a $342,271 contribution to the Augustine Foundation from the diocesan With Grateful Hearts capitol campaign, and the establishment of a scholarship fund for Sacred Hearts School in Lahaina, Maui, with a $140,000 initial investment.
This year, investment earnings from the With Grateful Hearts endowment, which now totals $1,367,508, generated $40,000 for scholarships.
The Augustine Foundation will help manage the Sacred Hearts, Lahaina, school fund, as it does the endowment funds of at least seven other Hawaii schools. The foundation also manages funds for four Oahu parishes without schools that give Catholic school scholarships to their student parishioners, and a fund for the Maui vicariate.
The foundation also has special named scholarship funds with the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Conrad Hilton Foundation, First Hawaiian Foundation and the Shane Victorino Foundation.
It also administers special funds named for the late Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario, the late Father Daniel J. Dever and former Catholic schools superintendent Carmen Himenes, and several named donor funds for individual schools.
This fall, the Augustine Educational Foundation will distribute more than $570,000 to 441 students in Catholic elementary and high schools.
The foundation has given over $7 million in scholarships to more than 7,600 students since the late Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario created it in 1984.
The financial help goes to students from kindergarten through grade 12 in 32 schools on Oahu, the Big Island, Kauai and Maui.
