Cincinnati Bar Foundation Celebrates 60

This article is  from the CBA Report Centennial Issue, originally published January 1973

The Cincinnati Bar Association Foundation was organized as a corporation not for profit on November 22, 1961. The incorporators were Francis L. Dale, James L. Elder, and Jack B. Josselson. The corporation is operated exclusively for charitable, scientific, literary and educational purposes. Its specific purposes include paying the expenses and providing free legal aid to indigent persons who would otherwise be unable to obtain such aid, relieving, aiding and assisting as charitable acts, lawyers in Hamilton County who are over 60 years of age and who are ill, incapacitated, indigent and in need of such aid. The corporation is operated by a board of trustees consisting of the Executive Committee of the Cincinnati Bar Association. The immediate Past President of the Cincinnati Bar Association has served as President of the Cincinnati Bar Association Foundation.

The Foundation also administers the Alfred B. Benedict Fund. Mr. Benedict was President of the Cincinnati Bar Association and vitally interested in the Association and in the Cincinnati Law Library Association. Mr. Benedict died on October 16, 1933. In his Will he made a bequest for the benefit of the Cincinnati Bar Association and the Cincinnati Law Library Association subject to the life interest of his widow, Emma L. Benedict. Under the bequest, the Bar Association was to receive one-half of the residue with the principal to be kept as a permanent endowment and the income only to be used for the purposes of the Association, for the relief of needy lawyers of Hamilton County, Ohio, past 60 years of age, for providing legal aid for the poor, and for promoting the cause of justice among men. The other one-half was a bequest to the Cincinnati Law Library Association, the principal to be kept as a permanent endowment, the income only to be used for the purposes of the Association.

Mrs. Benedict died in 1956 and thereafter the Court ordered the assets transferred to the Foundation and Law Library Association as directed in the will.

The combined assets of the general fund of the Foundation and the Alfred Benedict Fund had a current market value, according to the auditor’s statement as of May 31, 1972, of $131,018. Combined income to the two funds for the year ending May 31, 1972, was $5,476. This was from dividends, interest on savings accounts and contributions made from time to time by members in memory of deceased lawyers. During the past several years the funds have been used to provide tuition expenses for law students in need of financial assistance.

The largest single gift ever made to the Foundation was made by Mr. Charles Sawyer in 1972-1973 in the total sum of $25,605.61 for the cost of a monument which was sculpted and erected on Foundation Square during the summer of 1972 in recognition of the Centennial of the Cincinnati Bar Association. The monument is a gift to the community depicting “law and society.”

 

(Law and Society sculpture, by Barna von Sartory, 1972. Presently located at Sawyer Point.)