Melwood Receives $3M Gift from Estate of Arlington Couple

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (April 14, 2016) — Melwood, one of the largest employers of people with disabilities (“differing abilities” is the organization’s preferred terminology) in the Washington, D.C. region, announced today that it has received a generous donation from the estate of Peter M. Kolls and his wife, Geraldine “Gerry” Schaeffer, M.D. The couple lived in Arlington, Va. and traveled extensively, making friends around the world.

Peter Kolls was born in 1936. He served in the military for six years, including two years of active duty and four years in the Reserves. Kolls graduated from the University of Alabama with a business degree and later played football for five years with the San Diego Chargers.  After his football career, he took an administrative job with the Federal government and retired from the National Park Service in 1995. It was during this time that Peter became familiar with Melwood and its employees who were working on a variety of Federal worksites. Kolls passed away last year.

Dr. Schaeffer was born and raised in South Philadelphia. Her parents were both from Russia and they owned a toy store.  Schaeffer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received her M.D. from the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. She completed her residency training in psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and started a private practice in D.C. where she served a variety of patients, including many who were dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder. She remained in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia until her death in 2013.

Although they loved to travel, the two lived frugally, choosing to save their accrued estate to help improve the lives of others.

“This couple was so very generous, and we are so grateful for their gift,” stated Cari DeSantis, president and CEO of Melwood. “The gift is one of the largest that Melwood has ever received, and the fact that they stipulated the use of the gift for ‘programs and services for veterans in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area,’ could not be more timely and needed,” she added. Last year, Melwood launched a program for veterans called Operation: Tohidu^®—a week-long retreat for veterans and active duty service members with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and other deployment-related traumas.

With a 53-year history of innovative service and advocacy for people with differing abilities, growing numbers of veterans have been coming to Melwood for assistance. When the organization realized that many veterans were having a difficult time landing and staying in a job and reintegrating into their families and communities, they set out to find a solution, brought in experts (many of which are also military) and developed Operation: Tohidu.

 "While we remain steadfast in our mission to transform the lives of people with intellectual and developmental challenges,” said DeSantis. “We believe addressing the needs of our nation’s warfighters living with trauma-induced challenges like post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury is a natural evolution of our founding mission." 

The program is offered at no charge to veterans and active duty service members who have been formally diagnosed or are self-reporting with PTS(d), mTBI and other deployment-related challenges. While Operation: Tohidu is available for veterans from around the country, many veterans in the Washington, D.C. region have participated, including one recent veteran who said he’d been to more than a dozen programs to date and none had helped until Tohidu.

The program has been so successful that Melwood now plans to establish a separate charitable entity for veteran services under its corporate umbrella. “We recognize that we have the ability and the expertise to really make a difference in the lives of so many veterans who have experienced the traumas of war and need help learning to cope and reintegrate successfully back into civilian life,” DeSantis explained.  “The Kolls donation will go a long way to help those veterans who need help now.  In fact, our board of directors recently committed $1 million from the Kolls bequest to establish a matching gift program that will help us fully deploy and sustain Operation: Tohidu and our Veterans Services Division. For each dollar donated by the public between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017, a dollar from the Kolls fund will be invested in the program” We trust and hope that the public will join us in making Operation: Tohidu and Melwood Veteran Services a permanent resource for veterans.”

“The generosity of Peter Kolls and Dr. Geraldine Schaeffer will help Melwood improve the lives of so many more people, especially our nation’s warfighters and their families. The significance of their gift is profound, its impact will last for many years. What a wonderful legacy!” added DeSantis.

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About Melwood: 

Melwood is a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organization that advocates for and empowers people of differing abilities to transform their own lives through unique opportunities to work and play in the community. Melwood envisions a world where people with differing abilities are fully included. Using an innovative and effective social entrepreneurial model, Melwood offers job training, employment, life skill improvement, community support and recreation opportunities to more than 2050 people each year in the D.C. metropolitan area. Melwood operates a training program graduating approximately 100 workers with differing abilities each year and employs more than 1,400 workers, including over 800 with differing abilities throughout the State of Maryland and the Greater Washington DC Metro Area. For more information visit www.melwood.org

For more information on Operation: Tohidu, call 301-856-6358, email tohidu@melwood.org, or visit our website at www.melwood.org/operationtohidu.