A Bequest to Honor a Loved One and Support the Arboretum

For Leslie Borns, The Morton Arboretum is a boundless resource for natural beauty, research, and conservation. It’s also a place she and John Hollister Purcell, who passed away in 2022, often visited together. That’s why she has created a bequest in her will to support the Arboretum while honoring John’s memory.

In creating the bequest, “I thought about what was really important to John’s life and in my life,” says Leslie, who volunteers at the Arboretum.

A Chicago resident since 1974, Leslie began birding and spending more time in nature after a serious accident changed her life and priorities. It was through this newfound passion that she met John, a Glen Ellyn native, whose love for nature started very young when he bicycled to the Arboretum to take birding lessons from naturalist May Theilgaard Watts and discovered his passion for birds and plants.

“Given our history and John’s history with the Arboretum, and how important it is as a botanical garden and research center, I want to support that,” Leslie says. “When I think about the things that are important to keep going in perpetuity, I think of places like The Morton Arboretum.”

Leslie’s bequest, which is in her and John’s names, will support the research, conservation, and restoration of native oaks, a keystone species in the Midwestern landscape and John’s favorite tree species.

Leslie urges others to join her in making a planned gift in support of the Arboretum.

“Do it! Follow your heart,” she says. “It is very gratifying—a very healing thing. Whenever I go to the Arboretum, it feels like holy ground.”