The family of Margaret “Sunny” Stevenson has established the Sunny Stevenson Endowment for Arts & Culture in honor of her lifetime commitment to supporting arts and culture in Pasadena.
Sunny was born in Pasadena in 1924. She attended Pasadena schools and graduated from Pasadena Junior College. In August 1945, upon her graduation from Pomona College, she joined a program to bring new schoolteachers to Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. She traveled on the last war-time crossing to Hawaii, where she subsequently taught for five years. In the 1950’s, she returned to Pasadena to teach kindergarten through second grade at Washington, Lincoln, and Willard Elementary Schools until her retirement in 1990.
Sunny had a passion for arts, culture, and the history of Pasadena. She was a founding member of the Pacific Asia Museum and was very active there for the rest of her life. She also was a long-time supporter of the Pasadena Museum of History and was thrilled to have her family’s history displayed as part of the museum’s Family Stories exhibition, which celebrated the different ethnic cultures that built Pasadena.
Sunny combined her dedication to children with her passion for arts and culture to become a storyteller to children at both museums. She used her 1,000+ book collection of children’s stories from around the world to entertain and educate children. She was a masterful storyteller who shared her passion with small children to adults. It was her biggest joy to share stories that expanded her audiences’ world.
In 2021, Sunny passed away at age 97. Her endowment creates a lasting legacy to support her passion for children, art and culture.
THE POWER OF ENDOWMENT
Endowments are the cornerstone of PCF’s mission to build hometown legacies. The corpus of each endowed fund is invested with PCF’s portfolio for long-term growth. Each year, the endowments generate the funds that support PCF’s local grantmaking, which enriches the arts community, protects our environment, provides health care and critical social services, and bolsters public education in Pasadena. Endowments are permanent legacies for our community; these funds will continue to grow and provide philanthropic support forever. Learn more about creating an endowment at PCF.
Created December 2022