About

Our Mission

The Derby Fund honors Bill and Mary Derby, who have spent their lives in service to the social, educational, and spiritual needs of the Geneseo community. For thirty-five years, Bill was a beloved faculty member in the History Department at SUNY Geneseo. Mary spent decades advocating for the needs of physically and developmentally-disabled community members and their families. Throughout their lives, they’ve been active, dedicated members of the Catholic Church. They’ve loved living in Geneseo, and the town has benefited from their decades of loving engagement with its people, places, and institutions.

The Derby Fund, when fully endowed, will support the causes Bill and Mary have always held most dear: history education, individuals with disabilities and their families, and Catholic Charities.

Bill Derby was born in Massena, NY in 1925. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and pursued a degree in History on the G.I. Bill. He met Mary, a Wisconsin native, while working on his PhD at the University of Wisconsin. They married and moved to Geneseo, where a faculty position in the SUNY Geneseo History department had opened up. Bill was accustomed to life in Western New York, so the move was a natural one, but Mary had reservations moving across the country to a small town she’d never heard of. When they finally pulled in to town, with its quaint, inviting main street bustling with students, faculty, and townspeople, Mary was convinced they’d found home.

Just as Bill’s teaching career was taking off and he and Mary were starting to feel like a part of the Geneseo community, they learned in 1963 that their fourth child, Margaret, was blind and severely disabled, and would never walk or talk. At the time, support services and resources for families of disabled children were virtually nonexistent, but Mary knew she wouldn’t be able to navigate Margaret’s care in isolation, so she sought out and formed a community with other parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and this close-knit, hard working alliance would join forces with a fledgling organization known as the A.R.C. (now The Arc) to fundamentally transform the way New York State cares for individuals with disabilities.

Over the next decades, as Bill continued to inspire generations of students on campus, Mary fought tirelessly for the rights of the mentally and developmentally disabled, pushing for the establishment of community-based residential care facilities to replace the large-scale state institutions that had come to define mental health care in the 20th Century, as well as job programs to allow adults with disabilities to lead meaningful, productive lives in their own communities.

Throughout their life together, Bill and Mary have leaned on their faith to pull them through challenging times, and their deep and unwavering commitment to the Catholic Church and the spiritual community in Geneseo has served as inspiration for generations of residents.

Bill passed away in 2013, but his memory lives on in Mary’s heart, in the family they raised, and in the students and community members he affected through his quiet, dedicated service. The Derby Fund ensures that Bill and Mary’s names will forever be associated with kindness, patience, dedication, and faith.