Honoring Retiring W&L Trustee Jorge Estrada '69
Jorge Estrada, of the Class of 1969, retired from Washington and Lee’s Board of Trustees following the board’s meeting on the campus this weekend, but his 47-year relationship with the University is hardly ending.
Three of Jorge’s five children are already W&L alumni — Annie ’04, Carol ’05 and Juan ’06. Estefi is a member of the Class of 2013 and will be joined in the fall by Javier, as a member of the Class of 2016. Granddaughter Ana is already set for the Class of 2032.
A member of the board since 2003, Jorge made it a point to return to Lexington for all 27 meetings of the Board of Trustees during his tenure — no mean feat when you consider that he made the three-times-a-year trek from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Jorge is a native of Medellin, Colombia. He came to W&L through the International Student Exchange Program. In 2004, 35 years after his graduation, Jorge met the late Isadore M. Scott, a 1937 W&L alumnus and former trustee who had funded the scholarship that allowed Jorge to attend.
In addition to his own children, Jorge has been responsible for the attendance of several dozen Argentinian students at W&L. But he may not have used the same tact with them that he did with his offspring. “I told my children that they could go to college anywhere they wanted,” said Jorge, who was honored at the trustees’ dinner. “But I added that I would only pay for them to go to Washington and Lee.”
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