Note: This message was originally sent on May 21, 2021
Don Rockstrom was an only child who grew up in the Logan neighborhood as the grandson of a principal at the McGoldrick Lumber Company, which used to have a mill pond on what is now Lake Arthur. McGoldrick’s and Gonzaga University were his childhood playgrounds. As a boy, he and his neighborhood pals would run across the logs in the river and watch Gonzaga football games from the roof of Desmet Hall. Later, when Don was a teen, he and his friends constructed a ramp into a vacant lot across from the family home on the corner of Sinto and Cincinnati, where they would charge 25 cents to park cars for Gonzaga football fans on game days.
In a 2017 interview, Don recalled, “I probably still have the first quarter I made.”
Don attended Eastern Washington University before he was drafted into the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Grateful that he was never sent to fight in Korea, Don was stationed in San Luis Obispo, California and Fairbanks, Alaska, before returning home to the Pacific Northwest, where he spent 20 years as the successful owner of an apple orchard in the Yakima Valley. He returned to Spokane as a sales representative for Kaiser Gypsum company before retiring to spend more time with his wife, Donna. All his life, just as he did with that first quarter, Don saved.
Wanting to do something good with the wealth he had amassed and holding onto a strong belief in the power of higher education, Don established scholarships at Whitworth University, Eastern Washington University, Washington State University and Gonzaga University. What started as a quarter has become million-dollar endowments that will support thousands of students for generations to come.
Don Rockstrom passed away recently. He will be truly missed by family, friends, and neighbors and most certainly by his friends at GU. But his legacy will live on in the fuel his endowments provide for students across the Inland Northwest. The gratitude Gonzaga feels for Don is the same felt for you—the committed community who continuously shows up for students with your support. Thank you…..