Mary Rezek’s gift for Napa’s future
On Napa parade days, Mary Rezek’s home in downtown Napa is buzzing.
The Fourth of July parade route runs right past her house, and so does the Christmas parade. By mid-morning the house is filled with friends, food and drinks, and kids underfoot.
“My home is a hive,” Mary says, with delight. “My community is so important to me.”
Mary grew up in Walnut Creek and moved to Shanghai in 1998, where she founded an organizational learning and development business. She bought her Napa house in 2013 after waking up one morning in China and deciding it was time for something different. At first, she was a part-time Napa resident. Then COVID arrived while Mary was home in Napa between Christmas and Chinese New Year. What made Napa permanent wasn’t the lockdown. It was her Leadership Napa Valley class — Class 33 — and the way her classmates looked out for one another through a difficult year.
“What I find is Napa people take care of each other, and it’s not ‘Napa nice,’” Mary says. “It’s because the community comes together. It makes me want to give back. Napa is important to me because I get so much more than I am able to give.”
When Mary began thinking about the future of the Valley — and her own place in it — she knew she wanted to leave behind something that would give someone else a boost up. For her, that meant education.
“Education is a ticket into different types of freedom,” she says. “It opens doors.”
So in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Mary sat down with NVCF President & CEO Terence Mulligan outdoors and together they built a plan. One day — hopefully many, many years from now — her legacy gift to NVCF will establish a Fund to help people pursue educational opportunities and overcome the financial barriers that can stand in their way.
Having it settled and in writing, Mary says, was a relief.
And she is quick to point out that the word “scholarship” doesn’t fully capture what she has in mind.
“It’s really about access,” she says. “You might need to have your tires redone so you could get to class. It might mean that you need books. I don’t care about the age of the student, or their background. What I care about is: What do you need in order to graduate to fulfill yourself, your family?”
Mary doesn’t have children and has a very small extended family. So when she thought about what should happen to what she has built over a lifetime, she found herself thinking instead about people she will never know.
“The people who I haven’t even seen, who are looking to better their lives — they are the ones who need it,” she says. “That was my intention.”