UToledo’s Saloff Welcome Center Celebrates Remarkable Legacy

UToledo's Saloff Welcome Center Celebrates Remarkable Legacy

For most of their adult lives, schoolteachers Dorothy and Georgianna Saloff shared a small house on Valentine Street in East Toledo, drove nothing flashy, ate nothing extravagant and wore the same beautifully maintained and fashionable clothing decade after decade. They never married or had children of their own.

What they poured themselves into, with every dollar saved and invested, and every hour given in and out of their classrooms, was the power of education.

The University of Toledo will celebrate the extraordinary life's work of the late sisters on Friday, Sept. 18, with a public ribbon-cutting for the Dorothy and Georgianna Saloff Welcome Center - the new "front door" of the University located in, and between, Tucker and Scott Halls.

The naming recognizes one of the largest individual gifts in UToledo's history and the passion behind that remarkable gift from a pair of humble elementary schoolteachers.

"Dorothy and Georgianna firmly believed that education is the key to a successful life; that it will make all the difference in your world, and it will help make a difference in our world," said Dan Saevig, a longtime family friend of the Saloffs. "As UToledo graduates who spent their careers planting the seeds of curiosity in East Toledo classrooms, their legacy gift ensures their work goes on forever."

The Saloff Welcome Center will serve as the first point of contact for prospective Rockets and their families beginning their higher education journey, and also as a hub of student support services including financial aid, the registrar's office and the military services center.

"Dorothy and Georgianna Saloff are the embodiment of what UToledo stands for. They came here as first-generation students, gave decades of their lives to the youngest learners in our city, and then quietly, and generously gave everything else to ensure the next generation could do the same. It is only right that their names greet every student who walks through this door," said UToledo President James P. Holloway.

A single gold coin

The story behind the Saloff sisters begins with their father, George Saloff, who immigrated to America from Macedonia with a single gold coin in his pocket.

He settled in East Toledo, found work as a chemical sampler at the Interlake Iron Corporation, and, along with his wife, Anna, raised two daughters in the Birmingham neighborhood. He instilled in them the same thing every parent who has ever sacrificed for the next generation has said: "I want something better for you, and the only way to get it is an education."

Dorothy, born in 1929, graduated first in her class from Waite High School in 1947, earned a scholarship to The University of Toledo, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Education degree in 1951.

Georgianna, born in 1940, followed her sister to UToledo and received her own Bachelor of Education degree in 1962. Both went on to earn their Master of Education degrees from the University they would spend the rest of their lives giving back to.

Investing in children

Together, they taught kindergarten through third grade in Toledo Public Schools for a combined 83 years - Dorothy at Raymer Elementary for 43 years, and Georgianna at East Side Central for 40.

Long before national programs brought attention to the cause, Dorothy and Georgianna were buying books out of their own pockets and sending them home with children. They kept prize drawers filled with small rewards - pencils, stickers, little trinkets - for students who worked hard. They called their students "children," not kids, and treated them with equal measures of warmth and firm expectation.

Their former students, now in their 60s and 70s, still remember them. One, who grew up in deep poverty and went on to an executive career, credits Dorothy with seeing something in him when he was, by his own admission, a troublemaker: "You're smart. Stop behaving like a hoodlum."

He eventually earned his college degree and is one of thousands of East Toledo children whose trajectory was shaped, in ways large and small, by two amazing alumni who chose to teach in a neighborhood that was never easy, but it was home.

"They chose to work in East Toledo primary education because they wanted to help the kids from the neighborhood they grew up in," Saevig said. "Money didn't matter to them. Doing for others is what mattered."

Far-Reaching Philanthropy

The sisters' philanthropy reached beyond their own classrooms.

Both sisters were founding members of Women and Philanthropy at The University of Toledo and lifelong members of the UToledo Alumni Association. Together with their parents' memory always in mind, they dedicated a pillar in UToledo's Koester Alumni Pavilion to George and Anna Saloff.

In 2005 they established the George and Anna Saloff Memorial Scholarship to support students pursuing degrees in early childhood development. Dorothy created her own scholarship in 1995, giving $1,000 annually to a student who demonstrated leadership, financial need and community spirit - the same qualities The University of Toledo had recognized in her when she was awarded a scholarship in 1947.

They also gave generously to the region's public libraries and other literacy programs.

Multiplying impact

George Saloff arrived in America through Ellis Island with one gold coin and a dream of a better life.

Through a lifetime of discipline, faith in education and love of community, his daughters - following his example - turned their own modest incomes into a legacy that will now welcome every future generation of Rockets through the door of The University of Toledo.

They were, in the truest sense of the word, philanthropists. They chose to invest in others-creating opportunity, hope, and lasting change.

The Saloff Welcome Center is a fitting beginning for Rockets at UToledo: a place where new futures are imagined, and where a story that started with a single gold coin continues to multiply.