For Guy Lawrence ’70, gifts to Princeton are a smart retirement strategy and a way to honor his father

Happily, it did. Joseph matriculated in 1915 as a member of the Class of 1919, playing for the freshman football team. “The Nassau Herald” shows he also won a literary and debating prize that first year and participated as one of three class members in the Cane Spree competition. But all too soon, like much of his class, Joseph suspended his studies to serve the U.S. in what would come to be known as the Great War, rising to first lieutenant in the army’s infantry. When he returned to Princeton from his overseas tour of duty, he played varsity football, studied economics and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1923. 

Joseph continued to excel, becoming a renowned professor of economics at Princeton and New York University before embarking on a successful career in banking and economic forecasting. In 1940, he married Frances Bennett and they had four boys, two of whom would eventually attend Princeton (Bruce ’62 and Guy ’70). With a deep appreciation for the value of land, Joseph bought a working farm with 300 acres in northern New Jersey. As vice president of Empire Trust Company of New York, he compiled the bank’s forecasting newsletters. It was work he could largely do from home, while giving his children the experience of a pastoral childhood.

However, the life of Joseph Lawrence was tragically cut short at age 54 when he suffered a heart attack, which Guy Lawrence says was likely due to his father’s having contracted the Spanish flu while he was fighting overseas. At the time, Lawrence was just 2 years old. 

“Unfortunately, when he died,” said Lawrence, “as my brother Larry said, my mother was left with 350 cows and four kids, and the good news for us was that she decided to get rid of the cows and keep the kids.”  

The family relocated to southern Connecticut, where his mother made education a top priority for her children. The daughter of a Brooklyn florist, Frances had attended high school at night during the Depression while sewing bows on garters during the day. “She took the money from the sale of the farm and invested in us,” Lawrence said, “and her goal in life was to give each of us the best education she could.” 

For Lawrence, that meant following in his father’s Tiger tracks to Princeton. When his 50th Reunion was on the horizon, he contemplated how to honor his father and build his family’s legacy at Princeton while also preparing for his own retirement. His answer was to join the 1746 Society by establishing a Charitable Gift Annuity (CGA), which would not only provide life income and immediate tax benefits for him, but would also support future generations of Princetonians. As his 55th Reunion approached, he created two additional generous CGAs. 

Lawrence’s support of the University stems both from his father’s remarkable Princeton story and from his own, which also involves some life-changing advice from a teacher.

‘Study whatever you want’

Oskar Morgenstern, a world-famous economist who co-founded game theory, was Guy Lawrence’s faculty adviser in his first year at Princeton. Lawrence told Morgenstern he would be majoring in economics, too. At least, that’s how the conversation kicked off. 

“I started out by saying ‘Well, this is going to be a very short meeting because I know exactly what I want to do,’” Lawrence said. “‘I want to major in economics, and then I want to go to business school and get my MBA, and then I want to have a career in business and finance.’”  

Morgenstern suggested a different plan. If he let Lawrence keep the meeting short, he said, he wouldn’t be doing his job as an adviser. Instead, he asked Lawrence to tell him about his first semester classes, including economics, geology and the history of Renaissance art.

His adviser noticed something in the way Lawrence described the art class and asked him to elaborate. “‘It’s a different way to study history, visually, through the art of the time, and it’s fascinating to see how it was influenced by what else was happening in the world — and the professor is really outstanding and entertaining,’” Lawrence recalled saying. 

Morgenstern listened, and then he said something so surprising that Lawrence practically fell off his chair. “He said, ‘You have to think about the fact that you have three and half years here at Princeton to study whatever you want to study, and you will never have that opportunity again. I can tell you have an interest in the history of art. You’re going to go on to business school and get your business degree, so don’t worry about economics now. You’ll have plenty of that down the road.’” 

And so the famed economist encouraged the son of another renowned economist to find a different starting point for his own life. Lawrence majored in art and archaeology and never looked back. He is still grateful for the attention he got from his art history adviser, John Rupert Martin, a professor whose Baroque survey class was enormously popular due to his riveting teaching style. “I was his only advisee,” Lawrence said, “so I spent a lot of time with him on my junior papers and on my thesis. He would come down and have lunch with me and my friends at Cap and Gown Club.”  

Lawrence credits his long and successful career to his liberal arts education. After earning an MBA from Columbia University and then working in real estate finance and development, he pivoted to public relations. “A lot of my work was financially oriented, but a lot of it was involved in real estate development and hotels, and so aesthetics and things that you learn about in studying the history of art were really helpful to me,” he said. “The basics of learning to write well and express yourself, they’re critical in any field, but I think especially in public relations.”

50 years later: Building a legacy

Just over a decade ago, Lawrence and his husband, Ken, were beginning to think about retirement when a jewel of a house pushed them to make some major life decisions.

Lawrence was running his PR firm in New York and had a house in East Hampton and an apartment in the city. Ken had a home in Old Lyme, Connecticut. They had plans to marry and had started to envision what sort of home they wanted for their eventual retirement. On the checklist: somewhere with four seasons, located in the northeast and with a meaningful amount of land. 

Then Lawrence’s brother, Bruce, an Episcopal minister and professor of Islamic studies at Duke University who would be officiating the couple’s wedding, invited them to meet him in New Hampshire at Dartmouth to review with him the new Episcopal liturgy for gay marriage. In their internet searches for the perfect home, the couple had seen a house in Vermont that looked intriguing. They were definitely not ready to buy, but decided to take a look since it was just an hour or so from Dartmouth. 

“I kind of flipped out,” Lawrence said. The house, with seven fireplaces, stone floors and wood beams, visually reminded the art major of his family’s Colonial home in Connecticut. The home had a compelling story. Built in the 18th century, it had been moved piece by piece from Connecticut to a spot with breathtaking views of the White Mountains. The property included substantial land. Check, check, check. 

Their other homes were sold, and the couple had their dream house, shifting work arrangements in the process. 

Meanwhile, finding the perfect home for their future retirement also prompted them to review their estate plans and legacies. As Lawrence’s 50th Reunion approached, a classmate told him about CGAs, which provide guaranteed life payments to the donor and/or the donor’s beneficiaries. The remainder then supports the Princeton programs of the donor’s choice. Other benefits, Lawrence learned, are an immediate federal income tax deduction and the ability to reduce or defer capital gains taxes on appreciated assets such as stock.

“For me at that moment in time, that was what economically made the most sense as a way to give a meaningful gift but still have some income for retirement,” Lawrence said of the first CGA gift he made to Princeton. “At the time I was still working, and I wasn’t so concerned about current income, so we did it on a deferred basis.” 

About a year and a half ago, Lawrence, now retired, made another generous CGA gift. This year, he made a third through the Annual Giving Legacy program, which makes the gift eligible for his class’s 55th Reunion Annual Giving campaign. As a longtime participant in Annual Giving, this option was especially intriguing for Lawrence. “When we got to this year — and it will be our 55th Reunion — I wanted to do something again,” he said. “It made sense to take some income-generating investments out my husband’s and my account and put those into a third deferred annuity.” 

These gifts, Lawrence said, are meaningful on multiple levels. “A big portion of the AG Legacy gift goes to our 55th Reunion campaign, which will help our class get to our AG goal,” he said. And as with all his gifts, Lawrence said, “It’s also a memorial to my dad.” 

Giving to Princeton is an investment in the education of future Tigers, said Lawrence. Their stories can begin like his father’s Princeton story began in Buffalo: with the promise of an outstanding education on which to build a career, and the financial support that makes that education and its future benefits possible. 

“The statistics on how little debt students have when they graduate from Princeton is the best argument for supporting the University with gifts like these,” Lawrence said. “It’s an incredible thing and it feeds right into the benefit my father got with his football scholarship.  

“It’s a wonderful way to honor his legacy.”