Rhoda Kreiter Levine: Supporting the Fight Against Cancer

Rhoda Kreiter Levine first visited the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in 1983 and was extremely impressed with all of the research going on there — particularly in regards to cancer, which had taken her first husband and a son-in-law. Now years later and widowed a second time, Rhoda has established a generous charitable gift annuity that is paying her income for life, with the remainder to go to the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute.

Rhoda, who grew up on the west side of Chicago and currently lives in Highland Park, Illinois, chose to make her gift in the form of an annuity because of the secondary benefits to her.

"I want to feel I am giving to a worthy organization, and certainly Weizmann falls in that category," she explains. "But to be able to get a return on the money is a special benefit to me. Being in the stock market has afforded me a livelihood, but where else do you get a 9% guarantee for a lifetime? An annuity with Weizmann provides that."

In addition, Rhoda funded the gift annuity with appreciated stock, thus avoiding the capital-gain tax she would have had to pay if she had sold the stock.

Rhoda grew up during the Depression and remembers her parents giving her money to give to the synagogue for those who were less fortunate — the Jewish tradition of tzedakah. She earned an associate's degree from Theodore Herzl Junior College and attended Northwestern University for a time, then worked during World War II for Shure Incorporated, which was the prime military supplier of microphones and headphones. She married David L. Kreiter and had three daughters, losing her husband to cancer after 28 years of marriage.

She did a lot of volunteer work in the Chicago area matching Jewish-American schoolchildren with pen pals who were Jewish children in the Soviet Union, a program known as "twinning." She also helped synagogues in the two countries connect; the Beth El Synagogue in Highland Park still has the Soviet "twin" she found.

Rhoda first encountered the institute while visiting Israel with her second husband, the late Major General William P. Levine, for the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising. She and General Levine, to whom she was married for 33 years, visited a second time in 1985 while on a trip to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II.

"Going to that campus, I was really impressed with what I saw, the extent of the research," she says. "I had lost my first husband to a deadly form of cancer with no chance of remission. So cancer research was very important to me."

She says the research that has led to improvements in cancer treatment makes her optimistic for the future of her daughters and her eight grandchildren.

"As much as our country has researched cancer, so many of my family members and friends have lost their lives to it," she says. "Weizmann is one of the great institutes worldwide, and I hope that my gift will help to find some cures."