Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation

Jackson grew up as an orphan in North Texas during the Great Depression. Shortly after high school, she married Ray Keown. They lived in a small town in North Texas growing pecans when Ray died at an early age. Despite the many struggles of her early life, Jackson’s resilience was as unmistakable as her bright red hair and spirited personality.

Jackson later moved to Houston, where she met her second husband, Crawford Jackson, a rice farmer and landowner. They married in the summer of 1970. He later sold his property in Harris County. The Jacksons invested their money wisely and spent 17 of their twilight years together, never having any children.

After Crawford died in 1987, Jackson began thinking of ways she could honor his memory and give back to the community they called home. In 1997, Jackson established the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation, a scholarship-granting foundation that awarded tuition funds to students in the STEM fields. Jackson enlisted her lawyer Rod Koenig, accountant Steve Awalt and niece-by-marriage Brenda Harral to help create and manage the foundation. Two decades later, Harral, Koenig and Awalt continue to serve the foundation as trustees.

“We were blessed that we knew Hattie,” Koenig says. “She was someone you’d love knowing. She produced many a smile.”

“We all hit it off because both Rod and I are from small towns,” Awalt says.

Originally, Jackson wanted to fund scholarships for students undertaking STEM programs at schools in Houston and the surrounding areas only. However, she was persuaded to expand the selection criteria to include schools outside of Houston, such as The University of Texas at Austin. Although the university did not yet have a medical school at the time, she agreed to award scholarship support to UT Austin students who pursued STEM. Jackson died on April 27, 2003, but thanks to her generous contribution to the foundation’s endowment, the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation continues to carry out her legacy of hard work, resilience and philanthropy.

Over the past four years, the foundation has generously granted $50,000 to support Dell Med’s student scholarships. These contributions have earned the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation recognition in Dell Med’s Founders Circle, an elite group of early donors to the medical school.

“Hattie would be tickled to know she’s helping new medical students,” Koenig says. “Scholarships give people a little bit of a leg up. There are a lot of folks who can’t afford tuition, so it is a very important thing to do.”

The Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation has awarded nearly $4 million in scholarships to various colleges and universities since its creation 22 years ago.

“We’re not going to be able to solve all the world’s problems, but we are going to be able to help educate some of the doctors who will be helping take care of our populations over the next decades,” Koenig says.

The foundation hopes to address the needs of underserved communities throughout Texas, particularly in rural areas.

“Hattie liked the idea of doctors that we help educate staying at home in the state,” Koenig says. “We would love to have our recipients stay in Texas and help take care of the communities and little towns like the ones we’re from.”

Jace Tarver, a second-year Dell Med student and recipient of the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation Scholarship, shares this passion for the community. “I hope to improve access to high-quality, patient-centered health care and improve patient outcomes, particularly for vulnerable populations,” Tarver says.

Awalt also hopes the students at Dell Med will become physician leaders and innovators who care for their patients with empathy and compassion.

“We’re hoping we can see creativity and cures for the diseases that there’s still no known cure for,” Awalt says. “Whether these students will be in positions that will be treating patients or finding cures, we want to make sure that the right people have all the assets they need to be successful.”

Praveen Satarasinghe, a second-year Dell Med student and recipient of the foundation’s scholarship, recalls a recent experience that confirmed his passion for helping others through medicine. “When I received a smile and a high-five from a boy and his father after my first time interacting with a patient in the hospital, I began to understand what medicine was about,” Satarasinghe says.

Jackson’s philosophy of paying it forward is something Koenig embraces, and he urges the recipients of the foundation’s scholarships to do the same.

“I encourage people to leave their mark in some way,” Koenig says. “I will look at a student and say, ‘This is a wonderful scholarship. So what are you going to do one year from today?’ and they’re not quite sure what I mean. But I say, ‘Next year you will make a gift. It may not be very big, but in a few years, it’s going to be bigger. Then one day, there’s going to be a scholarship named for you that you’ve given to so that someone else has the same advantages you’ve had by getting Hattie’s scholarship.’ ”

Katherine Jenson, a first-year Dell Med student and another recipient of the foundation’s scholarship, expressed her commitment to this philosophy as well. “I hope to one day give back to the medical school and help a student reach their goals with a scholarship like the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation has,” Jenson says.

The first class of students will graduate from Dell Med in 2020.

Published January 2019