Gwendoline and Bronach Bye Memorial Fund

The fund is named in memory of my two wives, Gwen (1928-1993) and Bronach (1943-2023). 

Gwen was a teacher and Bronach a nurse. They worked in caring professions, so one is not surprised to know that they were both caring women in their personal lives. 

Gwen was unable to resist any request for donations to a good cause and the more checks she wrote the more requests arrived. Hunger and children’s issues were her main concern. She was generous with her time in support of our children’s schools. She missed the classroom but made up for it with her volunteering at the three Greenwich schools that they attended.

Bronach had a similar disposition to respond to any request for a good cause, and she became an indefatigable letter writer for Amnesty International.  Her nursing career mainly involved caring for college students and nursing home residents, the young and the old.  

After retiring she also became a devoted volunteer. She assisted at the Women’s Health Clinic on Fitch Street, New Haven, mobile dental clinics that popped up around the state, many years with A Better Chance in Guilford, the Hole-in-the-Wall shop in Guilford and latterly at SARAH's Cupboard in Branford.

The Fund has been established to support organizations that Gwen and Bronach women would have approved of. In so doing their lives are memorialized,  and worthwhile causes are supported. 

It is very satisfactory to have been able to establish the fund in their names, with the help of the caring staff of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

— Geoffrey Bye