$4.5 million charitable trust funds scholarships

Christine Ackers Cagle ‘35 and her late husband, Gene, a Fort Worth media pioneer, made meticulous estate plans. The charitable remainder trust that they established provided a stream of payments for their daughter throughout her lifetime. Ultimately it benefited Mrs. Cagle’s most cherished causes, TCU and University Christian Church.  TCU’s share amounted to $4.5 million and will support a key campaign priority, scholarships.

Mrs. Cagle, who died in 1990, had a Royal Purple heritage.  Her father, Lewis Ackers, was a TCU Trustee from 1929 to 1966 and a Brite Divinity School Trustee from 1942 to 1966. Mrs. Cagle helped fund an earlier scholarship in honor of her parents, the Lewis J. and Sybil Ackers Ministerial Education Fund scholarship at Brite.

Lucy Wilson Batchelor ‘67 recalls that her Horned Frog parents, Christine Smith Wilson and Stanley Eugene Wilson ‘40 regularly attended National Association of Broadcasters conventions with Mr. and Mrs. Cagle. The quartet also went dancing together every Saturday night. “They loved that dancing. Mrs. Cagle was a very elegant woman and was mother’s best friend for some time. I remember mother saying she really missed Christine after she died.”

A charitable remainder trust is a gift vehicle that pays the donor or beneficiaries of the donor’s choice an income for life or for a period of years. At the death of the final beneficiary or the expiration of the term of years, the remaining balance in the trust goes to the designated charity or charities.

The Cagle charitable remainder trust was written so that at daughter Carol’s death, the residual would be split between TCU and UCC.  The Cagle trust contained cash, mineral rights and a 3,600-acre ranch in Abilene.