Helene Fuld Health Trust

History

The Helene Fuld Health Trust’s history unfolds in three stages: the estate of Helene Fuld, who passed away in 1923; the Helene Fuld Health Foundation, active from 1935 until 1969; and the trust’s formal creation in 1969. Following her death, probate proceedings distributed $91,718 equally between her children, Leonhard Felix Fuld and Florentine Minnie Fuld. In 1935, the siblings each gave $5,000 to launch the Helene Fuld Health Foundation, named for their mother, a health and education advocate. The foundation’s holdings climbed from $4.8 million in 1952 to over $35 million by 1965.

Leonhard Fuld arranged a succession plan in 1961 to shift assets into a charitable trust. After his death in 1965, the foundation dissolved in 1969, moving roughly $25 million into the Helene Fuld Health Trust, which had been established in 1950. Marine Midland Bank served as the trust’s sole trustee.

Helene Fuld Health Foundation benefactors

Leonhard Felix Fuld was born in Manhattan in 1883. Between roughly 1902 and 1909, he earned five degrees from Columbia University, including a PhD in Sociology and Political Economy. His career included work as an editor, an Examiner for the New York State Civil Service Commission, and a police security analyst, but public health and sanitation remained his enduring interest. For much of his life, he lived as a recluse, often sharing a Manhattan tenement with his sister.

Florentine Minnie Fuld, born in Manhattan in 1878, was a primary school teacher. She died in 1956 of malnutrition at the Hospital for Joint Diseases, a facility her brother had supported. Before her death, she mentioned she had not left her home in nine years. Leonhard Fuld died in 1965 at the Helene Fuld Hospital in Trenton.

Selected beneficiaries

The Helene Fuld School of Nursing in Trenton, New Jersey, originally founded in 1895 as the Training School for Nurses at Trenton City Hospital, changed its name in 1951 to honor Helene Fuld. It closed in 2011. Coppin State University's Helene Fuld School of Nursing in Baltimore was founded in 1973 and offers baccalaureate and graduate programs; from 1963 to 1973 it was known as the Helene Fuld School of Nursing at Provident Hospital.

Publications

Leonhard Felix Fuld authored the 'Health Decalogue for Student Nurses,' published by the Helene Fuld Health Foundation on May 10, 1954. The foundation also published the Journal of the Helene Fuld Health Foundation from July 1945 (Issue No. 1) to February 1965 (Issue No. 438), with Fuld as editor.

The journal was published irregularly, initially monthly but sometimes weekly; one issue each year contained the foundation's annual report. Selected articles include 'Going Through Life on High' (No. 95, August 1951), 'Helene Fuld Health Trust' (No. 97, September 1951), and 'Health Provisions in the Bible' by Joel Wittstein (No. 264, 1959). Several issues featured photographs of American nurses wearing foreign nurse uniforms, and one issue (No. 128, April 1953) was titled 'Student Nurses of One Hundred Countries.'

Did You Know?

• Leonhard Felix Fuld earned five degrees from Columbia University between 1903 and 1909, including a PhD with a 1,100-page dissertation on police administration.
• Gordon Alexander Philips, who became president of the Helene Fuld Health Trust in 1969, had previously served as an FBI agent and municipal court judge.