This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
The Moline Community Foundation was established in November of 1953, with $53,000 in seed money from the Moline Chamber of Commerce and John Deere. It could not have come at a better time for Robert K. Swan Jr., who had just died the previous December.
Swan was the son of one of the founders of what became Minneapolis Moline Farm Equipment Company. He himself became one of the owners of the Moline Heating and Construction Company, serving as president for 31 years. Through all those 31 years, Swan quietly supported a number of local charities out of his father's estate and his own income.
Quietly may be an overstatement; he relentlessly avoided calling attention to himself. No one knew if or where he went to college. He joined almost no local social organizations. His office at Moline Heating was no different from any other company office. He never married. After he died, no one was able to find a single photograph of him.
Robert K. Swan died on December 3rd, 1952 as quietly as he lived. Aside from a few bequests to relatives and friends, he left his entire estate, $350,000, to charity. But even here he tried to hide. His will appointed three trustees to decide how to distribute the money. They were given one year to hand out the entire amount. 11 months later, they had not given out a single penny.
Then came the new Moline Foundation, part of whose purpose was to accept small donations and pull them into one larger fund, which could be administered more effectively. A perfect solution for the three trustees. Within a week they had notified the Foundation that it would be getting the entire Swan gift.
As he certainly would have wished, this unassuming philanthropist's name would disappear into a pool of donors, yet his gift would continue to benefit the Quad Cities for years to come.
If the Moline Foundation came at a good time for Robert Swan, he came at a good time for them. His gifts swelled the Moline Foundation to $400,000, placing it in second place behind the Pittsburgh Community Foundation among all 60 community foundations in the United States, whose average endowment was only $77,000.
Rock Island Lines is underwritten by the Illinois Humanities Council and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, with additional funding from Humanities Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council, and Augustana College, Rock Island.
