Cleveland native Holsey Gates Handyside spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, working primarily in the Middle East. The highlight of his career, which began in 1955 and took him to Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Libya, was his appointment to serve as ambassador of the West African nation of Mauritania.

Having traveled the world, Ambassador Handyside decided upon his retirement in 1985 to return to his hometown and devote himself to the preservation of his family home in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford. The Queen Anne Revival home, which stands at 762 Broadway Avenue and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1894 by his great-grandfather, Washington Gates, a member of the family that originally settled Gates Mills, Ohio, and later operated a mill near Bedford at the Great Falls of Tinker’s Creek.

In order to enable the maintenance of the Victorian-era residence by the Western Reserve Historical Society, Ambassador Handyside embraced the pioneering idea of using life insurance as a vehicle to establish a preservation fund at the Cleveland Foundation. With the foundation as the owner and permanent beneficiary of the policy, the insurance premiums paid by the donor are tax-deductible. Established in 1993, the Holsey Gates Handyside Charitable Remainder Trust supplemented a smaller historic preservation fund—the foundation’s first so-designated fund—that Handyside had previously created in 1988. A gift of life insurance, the former diplomat had recognized, was a “problem-free way to produce substantial dollars for a desired charitable enterprise.”