Upon the passing of Helga Ives in September 2015, an endowment was created at the YSU Foundation to support Italian Studies at Youngstown State University. Since that time, the focus of the endowment has changed due to demographic and program changes at the university.

This month it again is being refocused and will be renamed the David and Helga Ives English Festival Endowment.

The YSU English Festival originated in the fall of 1978 when Thomas Gay and Carol Gay of YSU’s English Department established a memorial fund in memory of their daughter, Candace McIntyre Gay, who died in 1977. The festival is a three-day program of activities that honor literature, writing, poetry and the arts. The festival takes place on campus each spring and is attended by local middle school and high school students.

“The Ives story, is one full of history and worldly experiences,” Scott Schulick and Mark Makoski, co-trustees of the David and Helga Ives estate, said, “As trustees responsible for representing their interests, we are pleased that this endowment now finds itself in support of youth, reading, education and a program that Helga had great fondness for.”

Schulick added, “With the change of focus of the Ives Endowment to the English Festival honoring Helga and David, we hope that other donors will be encouraged to help grow the English Festival Endowment to keep the festival alive for generations to come.”

The current market value of the David and Helga Ives endowment is $893,979. It will be providing the English Festival with more than $32,000 in annual funding moving forward.

The 46th YSU English Festival is scheduled next April 17-19.

David and Helga Ives were beloved by many across the community and around the world. David was a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College and Case Western Reserve University, and also studied at the University of Chicago. He was a lieutenant colonel with the Army Air Forces, serving in World War II, chiefly as an intelligence officer, and retired from the Air Force Reserves in 1969.

During WWII, David met Helga de Agostini, who was born on the Italian Istrian Peninsula. Helga was a graduate of the University of Naples Federico II with a degree in the sciences. She was enrolled in medical school when Nazi Germany took her as a prisoner of war.

The couple married on Helga’s birthday in Foggia, Italy on March 17, 1946, before returning to the United States. They resided in Youngstown where David accepted a position as an associate professor of classical studies with an emphasis on Latin and Greek at then Youngstown College.

David served from 1947-1984. He was the chairman of the ancient languages department and an original member of the Academic Senate. In the 1950s he revised and edited the university catalog and produced the first accurate map of the campus