New Rock Charitable Fund focuses on preservation and veterans in St. Lawrence County

The Rock Charitable Fund will focus on the maintenance and preservation of churches and cemeteries in St. Lawrence County, the preservation and maintenance of places of legitimate historical significance in the county and will benefit and/or assist veterans of the United States military who reside in St. Lawrence County, according to a news release from the community foundation.

“We are extremely honored to be part of the special way Marjorie’s passions and interests will benefit in perpetuity,” Northern New York Community Foundation Executive Director Rande S. Richardson said in the release. “Her incredible thoughtful generosity will have an enduring impact on the places and people of St. Lawrence County, not just one year, but forever. This is a transformative gift for the region.”

The Rock Charitable Fund board of advisors recently recommended its first grant award of $100,000 to the Heuvelton Historical Association to support Pickens Hall restoration, in particular the ongoing preservation of the third floor opera house.

The Community Foundation, in collaboration with a board of advisors, will administer this permanent charitable legacy fund. Grant funding will be awarded annually to qualified nonprofit organizations whose missions and efforts align with the fund’s objectives.

Eligible nonprofit organizations are encouraged to apply for grant funding later this year through the Rock Charitable Fund of the Northern New York Community Foundation. More information about the application process will be released in coming months, with grants anticipated to be awarded by the end of 2020.

Ms. Rock led an impressive life and in a 2015 interview with the Times talked about her life as an Army nurse from the moment she was shipped to Oran in North Africa in 1943, during a two-year stint in Japan in the 1950s during the Korean War and from 1968 through 1969, when she left Vietnam and in 1970, retired from the military.

She shared photos and stories about her brother, Wallace E. “Bud” Rock, a first lieutenant in the Ninth Army Air Force. Bud was only 20 when he was shot down on June 22, 1944, while piloting his P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bomber during the Battle of Cherbourg, France, following the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy.

She also talked about her time in Italy during World War II, including the last major eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1944 while she was in stationed in Naples, and images of the nurses playfully modeling the gas masks supplied to the Army nurses corps during the war and the rough, rocky and muddy conditions they were subjected to in Oran upon arrival on May 23, 1943, after a 14-day journey across the Atlantic on the Nea Hellas.

After war, she attended Teachers College at Columbia University, where she earned a bachelor of science degree in 1948 and a master of arts in 1950, the release reported.

Ms. Rock spent six years teaching in nursing programs, first as an instructor for Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and later at New York City’s Lennox Hill Hospital. She returned to active Army service in 1954 to assist with medical courses for enlisted personnel and helped to establish a medical education system, particularly in the United States, Japan and Germany. She served as a supervisor, chief nurse, instructor and director of an advance medical technician school. Her last overseas duty was in Vietnam.

In 1970, she retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel and returned to St. Lawrence County, joining her mother in Ogdensburg to help with her care. She earned many honors during her Army service, including the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal.

For the rest of her life, Ms. Rock made St. Lawrence County her home while traveling with friends, caring for others, and assisting her church and other organizations, including the Army Nurse Corps Association and other veterans’ groups. She maintained a keen interest in documenting local history and furthering the education of others in the county.