Local Resident Gives Away $100,000 to DSU

A retired farmer has provided $108,000 through her will to Dakota State University to make annual scholarships available to DSU students. Elsie Laisy of Madison died on Valentine’s Day one year ago. DSU announced today that money left in her will has now been made available to create a scholarship endowment in her name.

“She was a very quiet lady, but she was very thoughtful, too.” That was the comment made by Marvin Hanson, long-time Madison resident and friend to Elsie Laisy. Because of their friendship, Hanson served as executor of her estate. “She and her husband, Edward, were never able to have children. Having farmed through the Great Depression, they saved nearly every penny they ever earned. The combination of those two things left Elsie with a lot of money at the end of her life to decide how to best give away.”

Elsie talked with friends about her desire to help students at Dakota State. Madison residents, Neva Arneson and her husband Bill were a couple of those friends. “I think Elsie had a desire to help young people accomplish something she had never done—to get a good education,” said Neva Arneson.

Elsie only went to school through the eighth-grade. Like many young girls growing up at the turn of the last century, helping out on the farm came first. But farming near Madison and living thirty years of her life in town had given her the chance to see many of the young people that came to DSU. She saw it as an important time for them for growing up and getting ready for the rest of their lives. Using her life savings for scholarships was a way to be able to help many of them that struggled get their start in career and family.

“Elsie and her kindness will be remembered each year by a new group of DSU students, “ shared Rick Smith, Vice President of University Advancement at DSU. “Her scholarship is now endowed and its annual earnings will provide many much needed scholarship dollars each and every year of school. We promise to help spread the story of the tremendous good that Elsie did for the DSU and community of Madison.”

Smith also reported that over the twenty years that the DSU Foundation has been in existence, donors like Elsie Laisy have had a huge impact in helping the university. More than half of the endowments of the Foundation have come from estate gifts like Elsie’s resulting in hundreds of young people that are touched each year by these acts of generosity.