Tim and Anne McCarthy, long-time Immaculata employees, lived simply and gave generously to help untold numbers of students get a Catholic education. Tim was a groundskeeper at Immaculata in the 1960s and early 1970s, and Anne worked in the treasurer’s office from 1955 to 1985. When Anne saw students’ unpaid balances, she and Tim quietly paid them off, allowing the students to graduate.
“They didn’t talk a lot about it,” remembered Bill and Bob Saum, the McCarthys’ grandnephews. But the McCarthys probably helped “multiple students per year, I would say,” Bill speculated.
Bill and Bob’s mother, Anna Mae Volk Saum ’54, attended Immaculata thanks to support from her Aunt Anne and Uncle Tim. It was “an opportunity she would not otherwise have been able to afford,” Bob said. “Our mother’s family was not well to do at all,” but Catholic education was important enough to the McCarthys that they paid their niece’s tuition.
The McCarthys were not wealthy but frugal, almost ascetic in their lifestyle. Their house was tiny. The Immaculata College newsletter said of them, “A couple whose Christian concern for others knew no bounds, Tim and Anne, who never had children of their own, reached out to care for the children of others.” Bill remembers them as fulfilled, content people. “They found their calling in being able to support people,” he said.
Anna Mae Volk majored in history and education and spent her career teaching in Catholic schools, first in New Jersey, where she taught the son of legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi and had parent-teacher conferences with him when he was the assistant coach for the New York Giants. Then she moved to Ohio, where she taught religion and history at the local parish grade school. She later served as the school’s librarian and went on to become the principal for 10 years.
Anna was proud of her Immaculata education, her sons said. She displayed her Carol Night lantern in their living room. She spoke of the noble hill often, finding ways to weave it into conversation, even though few Ohioans knew of it.
Anna and her husband, Bill Henry Saum, had three boys and saved some money to send them to college. Bill Stewart Saum, the oldest son, expected to attend a state institution. But Tim and Anne offered his parents the funds to send him to a Catholic institution, University of Dayton, which his parents would not have been able to afford. “Every Christmas, I sent my grades and a thank you note to Aunt Anne and Uncle Tim,” Bill said. Bob and Brad, the other Saum boys, also went to University of Dayton, thanks to the McCarthys.
“They impacted generations of students,” Bob said, recounting how his parents saved a small monthly sum for college when their grandchildren were born. When a great-grandson was born, the family created a college fund for him—the fifth generation.
“The Anne and Tim McCarthy Memorial Endowed Scholarship continues their good efforts in a small way at Immaculata,” said Bob. He and his brother Bill, together with members of the Immaculata community, established the scholarship in 1986, soon after Tim and Anne passed away. The college newsletter that year announced the scholarship as “an effort to perpetuate the spirit that characterized Anne and Tim…to assist needy students in the ways Anne and Tim did quietly over the years.”
The scholarship pays for books for students with high academic achievement and financial need. Mary Santoso ’25, a music therapy major, received the scholarship last year. “It helped me ease the financial burden off my mother, and it helped me focus on schoolwork instead of constantly working to pay off my tuition,” she said.
“Tim and Anne changed the trajectory of a family’s education and Lord knows how many other families,” the younger Bill commented. Imagine how many students they helped, how many can say along with Bill, “Tim and Anne McCarthy changed my life.”
