Remembrance: Teaching and Honoring Family

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Therese Berg ’42 ’54, who will be 102 in December, remembers contemplating her future at 17. She graduated from Tucson High School and secured a summer job typing property tax rolls for the county assessor. Berg’s boss asked her to stay on when the summer ended, but the University of Arizona was calling.

“My father asked me to go to the University of Arizona for at least one year. I enrolled, and you couldn’t have dragged me out of there,” she says.

Berg delighted in joining the Chi Omega sorority and appreciated the individual instruction her professors provided. At the time, the university had around 3,000 students.

Berg graduated one month after the U.S. entered World War II and began a job at Fort Huachuca. She went on to enjoy a 40-year career as a teacher and guidance counselor. 

“I found myself so thankful to my father for urging me to get my studies. I loved teaching and counseling, because I loved 
the students.”

Berg’s son, Charles Clifford Hinman, also graduated from Tucson High School, in 1965, and began studying in the College of Engineering at UArizona, but died from cancer during his senior year. Hinman was a cadet major in the Air Force ROTC and was inducted into the Arnold Air Society, an honorary service organization.

After his death, Berg established a merit award for Tucson High School graduates beginning their final year studying aerospace engineering at Arizona. She wrote to recipients: “You are doing what my son was not able to do, but what he wanted to do with all his heart.”

When Berg later lost her husband, Robert Berg, to cancer as well, she created an endowed fellowship in his honor. She now has established several charitable annuities and added her parents and her aunt to those honored by her planned gifts.

“As long as there is a university, they will be remembered,” she says.

Therese Berg’s Planned Gift Endowments

The Therese Velasco Berg Endowment for the College of Education | The Robert L. Berg Fellowship |  Endowment for Research in the Cancer Biology Doctoral Program | The Therese S. and Charles Velasco and Marie Schreiner Fellowship in Cardiovascular Research | The Charles Clifford Hinman Fellowship in Environmental Health at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health | The Charles Clifford Hinman Memorial Merit Award in Aerospace Engineering Endowment | The Therese Velasco Berg Merit Award for Arizona Public Media Endowment