For the rest of his life, Dale was shaped by that doctor’s decision. He knew what it meant for

a community physician to look at a child in need and simply say yes. As he built his own life, serving in the US Air Force and later as a manager of Winn-Dixie’s semi-truck fleet in Louisville, Kentucky, he found himself drawn to the idea of paying that kindness forward. When he discovered Smile Train, the connection was immediate.

Smile Train’s model, enabling local doctors to provide free cleft care to children in their own communities, was precisely the kind of help Dale had received and wanted to give. His support of Smile Train grew into a personal passion.

He spoke of it freely, and he was open about his intention to leave a legacy gift when the time came.

When Dale passed away in 2024, he fulfilled this deeply held intention by leaving his entire estate, nearly $600,000, to Smile Train. His sister-in-law and nephew traveled from Kentucky to New York City to deliver the gift on his behalf, a moving tribute to their love for Dale and to his profound commitment to Smile Train’s vision.

Dale’s legacy gift ensures that children and families can receive lifesaving cleft care not only today, but for generations to come. His generosity will help make cleft treatment possible for an estimated 1,400 children, while also strengthening Smile Train’s training programs, supporting local partners, and expanding access to comprehensive care in the communities that need it most.

In this way, Dale’s gift is far more than a financial contribution. It is his doctor’s kindness, multiplied over time, creating a lasting future where more families can find hope, healing, and opportunity.

Leave a Legacy of Smiles

Planned Giving is one of the most meaningful ways to ensure that children born with clefts have access to the care they need — for generations to come. Learn how your estate gift can transform lives. Visit smiletrain.giftplans.org.

Julie McIsaac | JMcIsaac@smiletrain.org

That’s how I learned about cleft lips and palates and the severe physical and psychological issues they can cause. I also learned how children in countries where surgical care is not widely available are often made fun of and stigmatized. After graduation I ended up pursuing wedding photography instead — but that’s another story.

Years later an ad for Smile Train caught my attention. My studies had opened my heart to people with clefts, but what impressed me most was Smile Train’s model of empowering health care workers worldwide to provide free cleft care in their own communities year-round. I began donating enough to fund one surgery every month.

Once, I was looking at my budget and told a friend I might skip my donation that month. He looked puzzled and asked, “What about the child?” That hit home. What did my budget matter to a child with a cleft?

I sent that monthly check and all others since with that in mind. In 2014 I upped my donations to $500 a month.

I’ve come to realize that it was God’s purpose to introduce me to clefts and to Smile Train. He has blessed me with good fortune, and I’m to pass it on to help others. With a heart full of love and hope, I choose Smile Train — now and beyond.

I was nine in 1956 when my dentist found a strange mass on my lower jaw. Within days, I was in a hospital for two long, terrifying nights. My parents feared cancer. It was benign, but the mass covered my entire jaw and couldn’t be removed.

Ten surgeries followed over the next 30 years. My lump and missing teeth made me painfully self-conscious until, much later, dentistry gave me a prosthetic.

Decades later, my husband was in assisted living. One holiday season, I asked his aide about her family’s plans. She told me they were skipping gifts to raise enough for one child’s cleft surgery through Smile Train. Moved, I researched Smile Train and became a donor.

Helping children smile was addictive. I began giving monthly, then included Smile Train in my will. In 2017 I joined a Journey of Smiles, traveling to Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. I met a boy before and after his cleft surgery, held his mother’s hands as she cried with gratitude, and saw the skill of the local medical team.

I know the fear of facing life with a visible difference — and the joy of seeing a life transformed. Smile Train changes futures every single day.

Please give what you can. The gift of a smile is more powerful than you can imagine.

To learn about including Smile Train in your estate plan, visit our Smiles for Life Society page or contact us at 212.689.9199 or plannedgiving@smiletrain.org.

Many years ago, Edward and his late wife, Carol, were deeply moved by Smile Train’s life-changing work and committed themselves to continuing it.

“What Smile Train accomplishes is of real value,” Edward says. “In many parts of the world, and here to some extent, to be born with a cleft is a barrier that can deny quality of life because of bullying, social ostracism, even exclusion from school.”

That’s why investing in Smile Train is so important and why we work hard to extract the maximum productivity from every dollar. As Edward notes, Smile Train’s local medical partners share their training and knowledge with others in their communities, expanding their good work.

“Every dollar invested yields more than a dollar in benefits thanks to surgeries and training,” Edward says. “Smile Train is well managed, does important work, and is sustainable. They receive an A-plus in each category.”

Edward hopes others will join him in making a legacy gift to Smile Train, extending our healing touch around the world for years to come.

“Smile Train is one of the best,” he says. “Lots of charities would do well to emulate.”

But before heading out to her beloved flowers and vegetables, she has graciously set aside a half-hour to talk about her first passion: helping others.

“This is what I decided to devote my life to,” she says, calling from her home in the mountains of Colorado.

“Above my bed, I have the word ‘Gratitude,’ ” she says. “I love my life, and I just want to give back.”

In 2010 Sue discovered Smile Train. She quickly realized that high-quality, sustainable cleft care was a powerful way to transform lives for the better.

“I started out by sponsoring a child every year when I got my tax return,” she says.

In February, Sue took part in a Journey of Smiles trip to Guatemala. She spent four days meeting with patients, families, and local medical teams, witnessing the profound difference her gifts are making each day.

“It transformed my life,” she says.

Now Sue is “all in on Smile Train,” and it has become her “number one donation.” In addition to her generous giving each year, she has designated a Legacy of Smiles gift to Smile Train in her will — ensuring that she will continue to change children’s lives for generations to come.

“The beauty of Smile Train is that the funds are going to train local doctors to be able to give care,” she says. “If your donation can change one life forever and give a young child hope, that’s incredible.”

It is important to Gloria that her support for Smile Train’s lifesaving work continues beyond her lifetime, so she made a bequest in her will that will support Smile Train well into the future. As a longtime donor, Gloria says giving this way is easy — and it allows her to “have a bigger impact on children who were born like I was.”

Gloria made her first donation to Smile Train in 2002 after learning about our work from her niece, who was a nanny for a family with three adopted children — all with clefts. It was also a way to memorialize her father, who had recently passed away. “When I was born, my dad was devastated. He’d had a classmate with an untreated cleft, and he didn’t know what his daughter’s future would be.”

In her effort to help support even more life-changing cleft treatments for children, Gloria also created “Toning with a Purpose” — an exercise class she runs at her church — and asks for donations to Smile Train from the participants.

With her examples of financial support, community advocacy, and fundraising, Gloria hopes to inspire others to consider making a legacy gift to ensure Smile Train can continue to make cleft care possible for future generations in need.

“If you really want to impact someone’s life, there’s no better way than doing this,” says Gloria. “This is an organization you need to support!”

“Probably similar to me, she felt it was the most social good you could do for your money,” Dori says, adding that she appreciates how Smile Train’s narrow focus on clefts means she knows her money is serving a concrete, specific purpose. To ensure that her support for our lifesaving work continues for generations to come, Dori has included Smile Train in her estate plan as a beneficiary of her financial account.

“That way, I know that what I want to have done will be done,” says Dori, who knows one benefit of this arrangement is not having to rely on a trustee to follow her instructions. “A financial institution will do that for me. My trustee will have enough to deal with when I die, but this will already be taken care of.”

Dori believes that there will always be a need for cleft surgery. “The beauty of this gift is that it is not dependent on ever-changing political events,” she says. “This is a cause that everyone can get behind. It can unite us all, regardless of your political philosophy.”

Making her estate gift to support Smile Train gives Dori “the satisfaction of knowing that individual lives are being improved for the rest of their lives,” she says. “The children have something that cannot be taken away from them — their smile — that lasts their lifetime.”

Dori hopes her gift will inspire generosity in others and encourages them to consider the legacies they could leave “to bring self-esteem and empowerment to as many individual children as possible,” she concludes. “I appreciate very much the work that is done on the ground — the medical staff, the surgeons, the nurses, and all the healthcare providers that are part of the team that makes Smile Train possible.”

In addition to Paul’s plan to fund a surgery each year for the rest of his life, he has also made a bequest to Smile Train in his will to ensure that his and Donna’s support endures beyond his lifetime.

“If you want to make a tremendous difference in an individual’s life, a simple corrective surgery completely changes their life for decades,” Paul says. “It improves their confidence, giving them the ability to live their best lives. I think of the much better lives the children and their families will have due to the surgery, and it gives me joy that I’ve made such a positive impact.”

Now retired, Paul took advantage of his employer’s gift-matching program when he worked for General Electric, allowing him to fund one surgery, but have the impact of two. “I encourage everyone who works for a company with such a program to take advantage of it — in essence providing two surgeries for the price of one!”

Paul hopes others will consider the legacies they could leave by supporting Smile Train. “I always hoped to leave the earth a little better than when I came in,” he concludes. “Supporting Smile Train allows me to make a positive impact in the world and gives me the satisfaction of making a difference in the life of someone very young who will benefit for a lifetime.”

We have two rules: Whoever is in charge of leading the selection cannot choose a charity they already give to, and we cannot choose the same charity more than once.

The first year my father led the way, he chose Smile Train. He told us how he loved the life-transforming impact of the organization, the gleeful faces of the children who received help, the generosity and skills of the doctors and community volunteers, and the fact that a relatively small gift could change a child’s life trajectory and uplift their entire family. What especially moved me is the obvious fact that Smile Train makes it possible for people to SMILE, which is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human—a universally understood signal of joy, contentment, approval, welcome, celebration, and conciliation.

We started this tradition at the suggestion of my Dutch husband, who was baffled and bothered by the consumerism of Christmas in the United States. In his homeland, Christmas is a true holy-day and is totally separated from the celebration of Saint Nicholas (also known as Sinterklass)—which includes modest gift giving, such as sweet treats and playful original poetry on the evening of December 5. With that in mind, he proposed that we stop giving presents to each other and instead reach out to people with significant needs.

My mother got teary eyed at this suggestion because we had a tradition of carefully and enthusiastically buying or making gifts for one another. But we found a compromise, scaling down our usual gift giving and selecting a charity to support together. Eventually, we began drawing “Secret Santa” names within the family so that each of us had just one person to shop for. Our consumerism diminished, leaving room for our focus on charity to increase.

Despite our rule that we can’t choose the same charity more than once, we all nodded when Dad chose Smile Train for a second time toward the end of his life. By then some of us had started to give individually to Smile Train, which became a kind of standard bearer for the qualities we look for in the organizations we support.

Our donations have not signaled deep pockets, but there’s deep thought and appreciation behind those gifts—so much so that my husband and I just added Smile Train to our wills. That decision gives us great joy, all the more so because we know how it would please my dad.

By Bunny McBride

Homer Scoville was a success by any measure. He served his country with pride in the Air Force, then returned to his Connecticut hometown to serve as a family attorney. Always eager to challenge himself, he also branched out to become a real estate developer in Connecticut and Florida. Though he found success in both fields, he still wanted to help his community more—so he ran for, and won, a seat in the Connecticut State Senate. Though he succeeded in three distinguished, challenging careers, if you had asked him what his proudest accomplishments were, he wouldn’t have mentioned any of these. Rather, he would have looked you square in the eye and told you his proudest achievements were all in the relationships he formed.

Homer’s three children, John, Leslie, and Thomas, were the most important people in his life, and though Thomas tragically died young, Homer’s love for him lived on and suffused everything he did. His ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren were an endless source of joy. His most cherished relationship was with his wife Pat, who first came into his life around 20 years ago.

In his working life, Homer was a consummate disciple of Dale Carnegie. He had the uncanny ability to remember the names of everyone he ever met and saw each client, each potential customer, each constituent, as a friend who was counting on him to help their family or business. He did everything he could to deliver for each one of them. A true virtuoso at the lost art of negotiation, he always made his opening bid just a little too low to be taken seriously. Then, with tenacity, smarts, and patience, he worked the other guy down to a good deal. Working to find the best deal for his clients always brought him to life because it gave him the opportunity to do the things he loved: talk to people, conduct business, and think on his feet—skills that he pursued with equal tenacity at the bridge table, where he honed his excellent memory and competitive spirit later in life.

He brought that same passion to everything he did, whether exercising his body on the tennis court or at the gym exercising his mind at the local library—where he would read and learn for hours at a time—or while engaging in deep conversations with family and friends or exercising his spirit by giving back through the Rotary Club.

But Homer’s favorite way to give back was through Smile Train. A loyal donor for 12 years, he appreciated how the organization’s model set up entire communities for success by educating and training local medical professionals, who then went on to train others. He was no less impressed by how these professionals became role models to their patients, inspiring them to stay in school and believe in themselves. His deep belief in Smile Train’s model is why, when he passed away in 2019 at the age of 88 at his home in Florida, Homer left an extremely generous bequest to Smile Train—and thus joined the Smiles for Life program.

In his honor, Smile Train is proud to establish the Homer Scoville Education and Training Endowed Fund. Through it, Smile Train will now be able to teach generations of doctors in even more countries around the world the latest in cleft treatment technology and techniques, empowering them to likewise make a lasting impact in their communities and in the lives of thousands of children in need.

“This is a perfect tribute to Homer because there’s nothing he loved more than giving back and making children smile. The whole family is honored to be partnering with Smile Train on this endowment,” said Pat.

“I knew Homer Scoville as a kind, generous man who truly believed in the potential of ‘teaching a man to fish’ for helping individuals and communities lift themselves out of poverty,” said Smile Train President and CEO Susannah Schaefer. “I can think of no greater way to continue his legacy than through the Education and Training Endowed Fund that, in his name, will give communities around world tools for success for generations to come.”

Though Tom was devoted to his company and his clients, what he loved most about his job were the experiences it made possible in the rest of life. One of his proudest accomplishments was seeing Bob Dylan live 41 times, in addition to hundreds of other concerts by a galaxy of other stars from Paul McCartney to Tony Bennett. Not content to only let others do the singing for him, he played three instruments—and one of his greatest pleasures was to call those close to him on their special days to serenade them with “Happy Birthday.” Ever thoughtful, he also wished his wife Anastasia a happy anniversary on the 20th of each month in honor of the date of their first kiss.

Besides good music, Tom was also a connoisseur of vegetarian food, cinema, philosophy, and world travel—which he believed was a necessity for opening one’s mind to other people and cultures. He set foot on every continent, including Antarctica, but of all his hundreds of trips, one that always claimed a special place in his heart was the Journey of Smiles he and Anastasia took to Ethiopia with Smile Train. He came away from the trip astounded by how one surgery could completely transform a child’s life, opening the door for them to go to school and achieve anything they put their minds to. He was no less impressed by how Smile Train’s sustainable model of training local medical professionals enabled entire communities to lift themselves up out of poverty. He returned to America convinced that Smile Train’s work was the epitome of “Be strong. Work hard. Love one another.”

Tom sadly passed away in January 2020. He was only 62. For his final act, Tom ensured his creed would endure for generations to come by making an extremely generous bequest to Smile Train through the Legacy of Smiles program. With this gift, thousands of children around the world will now have their own chance to live their dreams.

“Tom often said, ‘Every child deserves a chance to smile,’ and I’m so proud that his legacy will live on through Smile Train’s lifesaving work. I miss him every day—but when I see a picture of a Smile Train patient, I know I’ll always think of him smiling back at me,” said Anastasia.

Susannah Schaefer, Smile Train’s CEO, commented, “Tom’s enthusiasm for life was contagious. I can think of no better legacy for this man who truly lived every moment of life to its fullest and left a smile on the faces of all he met than by giving children in need the chance to do the same. His is truly a life—and a legacy—worth celebrating. And smiling about.”

In thinking about his family and his estate plan, Morgan realized he could make a much larger gift through a bequest in his will than he could consider during his lifetime.