Barbara Anders Hoffman Endowment

Barbara Anders Hoffman’s father wanted all four of his daughters to go to college and get science degrees so they could support themselves if necessary.

Mrs. Hoffman was the second daughter and the only one who attended secretarial school rather than college. But she instilled the dream of higher education in her own children, said her daughter, Donna Steele.

“She was so certain she wanted her children to go to college, and four out of five of them did,” she said.

Mrs. Steele, who retired as director of technical training at Grifols in Clayton, served nine years on the Johnston Community College Foundation Board. It was during her tenure on the board that she decided to honor her mother’s memory by endowing a scholarship in her name at JCC to help others go to college.

Mrs. Steele became a teacher after earning an undergraduate degree, but later returned to college for a master’s degree in adult education and began her career in employee training at Grifols, a pharmaceutical company.

She remembered her mother as the daughter who was supposed to be a veterinarian but wound up finishing secretarial school. Her sisters were a pharmacist, a chemist turned teacher, and an occupational therapist.

Her grandfather, Mrs. Steele said, “did pretty well in getting them to do what he wanted.”

And while Mrs. Hoffman never became a veterinarian, one of her granddaughters is a vet in New York.

Pictured left to right: Barry Partlo (President, JCC Foundation Board of Directors), Mrs. Donna Steele (fund originator), Dr. David Johnson (College President).