It is with sadness that the Public Welfare Foundation announces the death of Antoinette Wade Marsh Haskell, 95, daughter of the Foundation’s founder Charles Edward Marsh, and longtime Foundation director. Mrs. Haskell died near her home in Martinsville, Virginia on December 29, 2009.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1914, Mrs. Haskell was the eldest child of Leona Johns Marsh and Charles Marsh. She was raised in Austin, Texas where her father was editor and publisher of the Austin American-Statesman and other newspapers. Charles Marsh eventually moved to Washington, DC and started the Public Welfare Foundation in 1947.
A graduate of Vassar College, Mrs. Haskell worked as an assistant purchasing agent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City during World War II. In 1947, she and her husband, Robert H. Haskell moved to Martinsville where he was publisher of the Martinsville Bulletin.
Mrs. Haskell became a director of the Foundation in 1953 and served until 2009, including as director emeritus from 2004. She helped the Foundation remain true to her father’s belief in investing in people and organizations to provide “the greatest good to the greatest number,” in the words of British political philosopher John Stuart Mill, as recounted in “Seeking the Greatest Good,” a book about the Foundation by Peggy Dillon.
Describing her father in that book, Mrs. Haskell said, “He firmly believed that people should have what they needed and wanted if it didn’t hurt anybody else…He just helped people out. And he gave away a lot of money.”
Mrs. Haskell continued that legacy in her own way. "I always loved that Antoinette would be quietly sketching at her place at the Board table and then suddenly pipe up to remind us why we were there," recalled Elizabeth Warner, a member of the Board of Directors.
In a statement, Peter Edelman, chair of the Foundation’s Board of Directors said, “We at the Public Welfare Foundation will remember Toni Haskell with special affection and respect. Throughout her decades on the Board she embodied the values that her father reflected in establishing the Foundation in the first place. Her sense of humor and zest for life were a constant inspiration. All of us who served with her on the Board or worked with her as staff to the Foundation feel this loss keenly. Losing Toni is losing a part of PWF’s history as well as a dear friend, but we will always hold her spirits in our hearts.”
