Dan Jordan Bequest Based on Lessons Learned and Friends Made

Dan Jordan ’77, asked to name an SI teacher who influenced him, had no hesitation. “Mr. Bill Morlock,” he said. “He taught me the name, location and language of every country on the globe, and I still remember them.”

Jordan, 54, speaking over lunch at Original Joe’s in North Beach, pursued history in college before living in Europe for eight years, where he learned to speak French fluently and Spanish conversationally. Now, as vice president of foundation and retail operations for Hospice of the East Bay, his ties to
SI remain strong enough for him to be the first in his class to become a formal member of SI’s Father Harry Carlin Heritage Society.

“I knew from age 10 that I wanted to go to SI,” he said.

A native San Franciscan, he recalled biking from his Outer Richmond District home through Golden Gate Park to the 37th Avenue school. “I’d take 36th Avenue, go into the park, ride around Spreckels Lake behind the Polo Field and head south to the Sunset campus. The bus would take 45 minutes; I made it in 12.

“I don’t think I could have gone to another high school,” he added, recalling lessons learned at SI “on how to be a good man and a good Christian” along with the friendships he made at school and while “drinking beer with schoolmates at Baker Beach.”

Four years ago, Jordan married his wife, Violeta, who works for Bachem, a Swiss bio-chemicals company. Given this major life change, they met with estate-planning attorney Greg O’Keeffe ’65 and updated their estate plans, which now include Dan’s SI bequest. “I want it used for students in financial need, and I want it used right away, not placed in the endowment fund,” he said. If Jordan predeceases his wife, she will make a tax-deductible contribution in Dan’s name to SI that carries out his wishes.

His plans also include the distribution of his collection of modern art to a nonprofit gallery and a bequest to Turning Point, a nonprofit fund that makes grants to organizations with proven records of serving San Francisco’s poor.

“I encourage other SI alumni to figure out what’s important to them and then create a plan to ensure that what they want to happen happens,” he added. A strong believer in planned giving — three years ago he hired a fulltime person to promote planned gifts to Hospice of the East Bay — he said his SI bequest “stakes my claim to something that was important in my life.”