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JCCC receives gift to honor Bart Cohen
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Johnson County Community College
Press Release

College Information and Publications
913-469-8500
Julie Haas, Director, ext. 3120
Peggy Graham, Writer, ext. 3425
Tyler Cundith, Sports Information Director, ext. 3122

Written 9/24/07
Story by Julie Haas

JCCC receives gift to honor Bart Cohen

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – The Johnson County Community College Foundation has received a gift of $1.3 million from Jon Stewart, college alumnus, trustee and president of Metcalf Bank. Stewart designated the gift to initiate a speaker series in honor of the late Barton P. Cohen, president of Metcalf Bancshares, vice chairman and general counsel of Metcalf Bank and an attorney with Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin LLP.

The first in a series of annual presentations, to be known as the Cohen Community Series, will take place Dec. 11, the day Cohen was born in 1930 and the day he died in 2006. The inaugural speaker in the series will be political pundit George Will. Proceeds from the series will support scholarships, programming and training at JCCC.

Stewart says he made the gift for three reasons. “First, I wanted to honor my friend and a very strong supporter of the community, Bart Cohen. Second, I wanted to raise funds for scholarships and programs at the college. And third, I wanted to bring regional and national recognition to JCCC.

“Bart Cohen was a great friend and supporter of this community. He was the most unselfish person I’ve ever been around,” Stewart notes. “The way he lived his life was an example, in a quiet way, of trying to do what was right and leave the world a better place than he found it.”

Cohen was a strong supporter of JCCC. He and his wife, Mary Davidson Cohen, served on the Foundation’s board of directors, and a gallery in the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art has been named for them. Cohen helped form the Johnson County Mental Health Association and the Johnson County Human Relations Council. He was first on the Fellows list of the Johnson County Bar Foundation, helped establish the University of Missouri Law Foundation, and was a member of the Kansas Bar Association since 1955.

Cohen served two terms on the Prairie Village City Council and one term as president of the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce. He served either as a member or board member of the Johnson County Heritage Trust Grant Review Board, the State Historical Society, the Bleeding Kansas Historical Site Committee, and the Wyandotte County Historical Society and Museum.

Stewart has been president and CEO of Metcalf Bank since 1999 and a college trustee since 2004. He is also an alumnus of JCCC.

“Jon Stewart’s generosity is a tremendous statement of his respect and affection for both Bart Cohen and Johnson County Community College,” said Terry A. Calaway, JCCC president. “The college is indebted to them both and is proud to help Jon honor Bart Cohen in this way.”