Twenty-five years after their son’s death in a plane crash, Merry and Stephen Astor of Los Altos are raising money so the Jeff Astor Foundation can buy an ambulance for Magen David Adom, Israel’s largest emergency medical response agency.
“A fully equipped ambulance costs $100,000, and so far we have $70,000,” said Stephen Astor, 74, a retired doctor. Merry Astor is a retired marriage and family therapist. They are longtime members of Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto.
“These ambulances pick up everybody who is hurt, not just Jewish people,” Stephen Astor said. “Just as the terrorists are indiscriminate about who they try to kill, Magen David Adom does not discriminate about who they try to save. We believe this would be important to Jeff.”
In July 1991, Jeff Astor was on his way from New York to Los Angeles to take part in a four-week program at Brandeis-Bardin Leadership Institute when he died in a plane crash. He was 24.
Stephen Astor said the family is reaching out to people they know and those who knew their son from the community, college or his job as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. Beth Astor Freeman, Jeff’s sister, is asking for donations from friends and colleagues in Los Angeles, where she lives.
Stephen Astor first set up a family foundation when his children were teenagers. “Beth and Jeff were the trustees, and I asked them to figure out what charities they wanted to donate to, as way of practicing tikkun olam, repairing the world,” he said.
“Jeff was the financial officer. He did the tax forms and banking. When he was about 15, the Internal Revenue Service audited the foundation. Jeff met with the auditor for over two hours at our house, and it turned out he owed the IRS $2.42.”
Jeff Astor was born in January 1967 in the Bronx. New York, and brought up in Los Altos. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, he spent a semester studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The following summer, he took part in Marva, a 10-week training program offered through the Israeli army. His dream, his father said, was to work in the U.S. in the field of finance and raise money for Israel.
After Jeff’s death, the family changed the legal name of the foundation. Stephen Astor said in the past 25 years, the Jeff Astor Foundation has raised and distributed $500,000 to Jewish charities, including Beit T’shuvah, Camp Ramah of Northern California, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, Friendship Circle Palo Alto, Israel Goldstein Village, Stuart House Rape Treatment Center and Zimmer Children’s Museum.
“This year, we hope people who routinely donate to Magen David Adom will do so through the link on our foundation’s website or include a note with their check so the campaign receives credit toward our goal,” Stephen Astor said.
For more information, see jeffastorfoundation.org.