Kurt Mayer’s Legacy Continues with Estate Gift to Benefit Lowell Students

Kurt Mayer’s American success story began in 1940 when he and his family arrived in New York harbor aboard the SS Washington, one of the last ships to cross the Atlantic with Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany. Two of Kurt’s grandparents and several other relatives perished in the Holocaust.

Kurt and his family boarded a Greyhound bus that took them to San Francisco. In 1944, after having met legendary Lowell High School debate coach George C. Lorbeer, Kurt enrolled at Lowell and quickly became an award-winning orator. Encouraged by Mr. Lorbeer to express his feelings about Germany and Germans as well as prejudice in America, Kurt wrote a speech titled “The Bitter Truth” that earned him top honors at various tournaments as well as an invitation to the National Forensic League’s 1948 national tournament in Oklahoma City—where he took third place in both oratory and extemporaneous speaking and first place in after-dinner speaking. 

After graduating from Lowell in 1948, he attended the University of the Pacific and served a stint in the Army before relocating to the Pacific Northwest — where he became a very successful home builder and distinguished philanthropist. Mr. Mayer passed away in 2012 at the age of 82.

In recognition of his seminal experiences in Lowell’s forensics program and in honor of his mentor George Lorbeer, Kurt Mayer’s estate is gifting more than $7,000 each year for the next ten years to help subsidize travel expenses for Lowell debaters. We are honored to have his generous support.

As Mr. Mayer wrote in his autobiography (My Personal Brush with History), “I have been fortunate enough to become a living example of the possibilities this country offers.”