It is with great sadness that the Foundation for the LSU Health Sciences Center announces the loss of one of its most generous benefactors, Billy Beer, who passed away on January 21, 2015 at the age of 84.
Billy Beer was just 25 when he arrived at the Charity Polio Unit in the acute stage of polio. Crediting an iron lung found in the basement of Charity with saving his life, Billy didn’t miss a beat in structuring a loving life with his wife Marcia for years to come. He loved big band music, relished good cooking and had an insatiable curiosity about people, politics, and history, enjoying recounting life’s amusing anecdotes.
In the early 1990s, the Beers established the Marcia and Billy Beer Endowed Scholarship Fund to support four year scholarships to the LSUHSC School of Medicine for tuition, fees, books and essential lab equipment with the request that upon beginning medical practice, each recipient repay this gift by offering one free day of medical care each month for those patients unable to afford medical care.
As Billy once humbly remarked, “I’m not a humanitarian but I know what it’s like to come from a background without wealth and success. If I could help someone from that kind of background obtain a quality education, then I feel my life would stand for something.”