A Nevada Legacy - Alumna's Good Works Live on through Legacy Gifts to Nevada
Genevieve (Swick) Paroni arrived at the University of Nevada, Reno campus with little means to pay for college. Raised during the Great Depression by her widowed mother, “Gen” worked in the campus dining halls during the school year, waited tables at restaurants during the summer and helped her mother run a boarding house at a mine near Eureka, Nev. Through her trademark tenacity, she earned a degree in chemistry in 1948 and spent her career as a beloved teacher.
Gen held a great affection for Nevada and its land-grant university, and was a longtime supporter of the Friends of the Library program and the Alumni Association. Together with her husband, Walter Paroni, a mining engineer, the couple included gifts to both the University Libraries and the Mackay School of Mines in their living trust.
Gen passed away at the age of 84 on Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011. Walter passed away at 88 on June 3, 2010. During Gen’s memorial service, her daughter, Andrea Paroni Storjohann, read messages from more than a dozen of Gen’s former students.
“Mrs. Paroni was my most inspirational teacher in high school,” wrote a 1974 Wallace High graduate. “Through her patience, knowledge and abilities, I acquired a deep and lasting understanding of chemistry and physics which significantly helped me through my engineering studies. She certainly left a positive mark in my life.”
For more information about planned giving opportunities at the University, please contact Lisa M. Riley, Esq., director of Planned Giving, at (775) 682-6017 or lriley@unr.edu.