Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Gus Rau Meyer Jr. always had a passion for travel. After his death Feb. 13 at age 27, his parents said it was an obvious choice to set up a scholarship for study abroad in his memory.
Gus Rau Meyer Jr., who died in February, graduated from the University in 2005. His parents have set up a study abroad scholarship in his memory.
This semester, his parents, Gus Rau Meyer Sr. and Cheryl Meyer, have been working with the Kansas University Endowment Association to establish a $32,000 study abroad scholarship in their son’s name.
Gus Rau Meyer Jr. graduated from the University in 2005 with two bachelor’s degrees in business and economics. He was a fourth generation Jayhawk.
“We were overwhelmed by the response we had from contributors,” Meyer Sr. said. He said that the money came from more than 220 contributors, including himself and his wife. “Gus really loved education and the learning process, and we decided KU was where we wanted to set up a scholarship.”
Sue Lorenz, director of the Office of Study Abroad, said the donated money would become a continuing scholarship fund that would generate scholarships for many years to come.
Rosita Elizalde-McCoy, senior vice president of communications and marketing at the Endowment Association, said that because of the national economic crisis, there were students who weren’t able to study abroad without this kind of scholarship.
“This enriches their educational experience as a whole when they can become ambassadors of the world,” she said.
Meyer Sr. said when it came down to choosing where the scholarship money would go, they had to decide among three categories: Creative writing, because his son had developed a love for writing; Native American culture, because he was proud of his Choctaw heritage; and study abroad.
His parents knew when it came down to it that their son would want to share his passion for travel by giving to study abroad.
“One of the things he learned from his study abroad was that you come back with an appreciation about a lot of different things,” Meyer Sr. said. “You learn to appreciate the other culture as well as how we live here and what we call home.”
By the time he graduated, Gus Rau Meyer Jr. had already been abroad three times.
In high school he spent a year in small village in Venezuela. He then went to Santiago, Chile, through the World Scout Jamboree for Boy Scouts, which he had been involved in for years.
Once he got to the University, his father said he wanted to study abroad again, so he spent the second semester of his senior year in Australia.
“More than anything, Gus loved to be able to assist people who needed his help,” his father said. “He would be glad to know this scholarship is going to help other people get the same kind of experience traveling that he had.”
When he died he was the sixth-generation worker at the family company, Rau Construction Company in Overland Park. He was a project manager.
Before his death, he had named the Kansas City chapter of the American Red Cross as the beneficiary of his more than $50,000 life insurance policy, which has all gone to local causes.
Lorenz said even though it had been a few years since Gus Rau Meyer Jr. studied abroad, his enthusiasm was still remembered.
“Reading and studying about other places is beneficial,” she said. “But living there and studying there like Gus did actually augments that to a certain degree.”
She said that time spent studying abroad provided students with several different opportunities, the first being first-hand experience in another culture.
“He was a very passionate, opinionated and giving person,” Meyer Sr. said. “He partly enjoyed traveling, but really enjoyed immersing himself in the culture and experiencing it at a different level. He would be glad that the word gets out for this and for people to find something they’re passionate about and follow it. That’s the way he was.”
— Edited by Samantha Foster
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