Leaving a Lasting Legacy

Fall 2019 - Charles Pinkoson enjoyed a remarkable career as an ophthalmologist in Gainesville, Florida, where he grew up and where he attended the University of Florida. His was a life of success and happiness that also had roots at Baylor University, to which Charles transferred as an undergraduate in the early 1940s.

"Dad thought Baylor was a special place," Lee Pinkoson says of his father, who died in August 2018. "He felt like Baylor saved his academic career and enabled him to go on to Tulane medical school. Baylor helped make my father's eventual career in medicine possible."

Charles met Rainer Nicholls, a native of New Orleans, while in medical school at Tulane University. When the two married it was the beginning of a 67-year union during which the Pinkosons had three children - Lee, Nona, and Beth. Following in his father's footsteps, Lee also attended Baylor as an undergraduate. Rainer died in February 2019 just after her 90th birthday.

After Charles had completed his residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans and served in the Air Force, the Pinkosons moved to Gainesville to begin his practice. He later focused his specialty on eyes as an ophthalmologist. As a physician and community leader in Gainesville, Charles became known for his compassion and desire to make a difference in the world. Later in life, he and Rainer wanted to demonstrate their gratitude to the institutions of learning he had attended by establishing student scholarships.

In 2015, they established the Pinkoson Family Premedical Endowed Scholarship Fund at Baylor University to support students pursuing a premedical program leading to a career in medicine. In addition to being charter members of Baylor's Old Main Society, Charles and Rainer were members of Heritage Club and 1845 Society Lifetime Honorees.

"Charlie loved sharing that his generosity toward Baylor was motivated by what Baylor had done for him as a student," says Larry Smith, assistant vice president for gift planning at Baylor. "He and Rainer fulfilled this passion to pay it forward for future generations of Baylor students by giving through charitable gift annuities."

For the Pinkosons, creating CGAs financially benefitted them and family members. However, their son Lee says, a centrally important part of their gift planning was the opportunity to make a difference in a school that had meant so much to them.

"My parents had a history of working with the universities my father attended as a way of saying thank you," Lee says.

"They believed in giving back a little of what they had received and to create a legacy that would make someone else's life a little better."