Behind Every Tribute Gift Is a Special Person

Tribute gifts to University of Detroit Mercy always have a unique story behind them. They are meaningful ways to memorialize people for whom the University has a special or unique role in their lives.

Two new scholarships are excellent examples of that. Both were established in the name of people who recently passed away by loved ones who knew how special the University was to them.

Orlando F.X. deSouza was born in 1928 in Goa, India, and spent his early life in Uganda, where his father was a general medical practitioner. Logical and analytical, Orlando pursued an engineering degree at a prestigious college in Poona, India, and worked at Caltex during the boom time for the oil industry.

In 1970, he took a sabbatical from Caltex to earn a master’s degree in engineering halfway across the world at University of Detroit.

“I was 13 at the time, so I don’t fully know why he chose University of Detroit,” said his daughter Nandita M. deSouza from her home in England. “But his brother was a Jesuit who was very prominent in education in India, and that may have been one reason.”

Nandita said her father often talked about the importance of education and about his time at University of Detroit.

“One of his favorite sayings was: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime,” she said. “He believed it was important to teach people to do things for themselves.”

She remembers Orlando telling her and her three siblings that if he didn’t have any money to give them, his greatest desire would be that his children were well-educated and able to live lives full of the opportunities made possible by a good education.

Nandita received that education and is now retired after “a very full and satisfying career” in the United Kingdom, most recently serving as a professor and co-director of the Cancer Research UK Imaging Center at the Institute of Cancer Research.

As Orlando neared the end of his life, his daughter decided to set up a scholarship with the money she knew he would leave to her in his will. She chose his alma mater, Detroit Mercy, as the recipient.

The Orlando F.X. deSouza Endowment Fund will provide scholarships for graduate students—like her father—studying mechanical, electrical or civil engineering in perpetuity.

“It seemed the obvious thing to do,” she said. “A few weeks before he died, I mentioned to him what I wanted to do. He nodded and smiled. I think he would have approved.”

Stephen A. Mazurak became interested in the law as an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska. He worked at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Lincoln, Nebraska, and it was the less-than-impressive way the company handled a strike that sparked a lifelong passion for labor and employment law.

After practicing law for a decade, he joined the faculty at University of Detroit, where, for 35 years, he taught contracts and labor law and served as acting dean and dean before retiring in 2015.

It was at Detroit Mercy that he met Cynthia Zane, who was dean of the College of Health Professions and McAuley School of Nursing at the time.

“He was the new dean of the School of Law, and we were at a meeting, and I thought, Wow, who is this new dean? He’s so engaging, and he had a wicked sense of humor,” Zane said. Not much later, the two represented Detroit Mercy Law at a community dinner and decided to drive together. The rest, Zane says, is history. They were married for 25 years when he passed away in January 2022.

“First off, he was absolutely brilliant,” Zane said. “When he was in law school, he was married and had a baby and graduated first in his class. He was just an amazing, caring, ethical, humble man, an extraordinarily involved parent, and we had a combined 12 grandchildren who, without a doubt, were the joy of his life. They will forever treasure the Grandpa Steve chocolate milk toasts while eating cookies.”

After Zane’s husband died, she received several notes from Mazurak’s former students telling her what a difference he had made in their lives.

It’s part of the reason Zane created the Stephen A. Mazurak Endowed Scholarship Fund.

“We both had scholarships when we were in school,” Zane said. “So both of us know how important it is for students to have financial support.”

The scholarship is designated for second- or third-year Detroit Mercy Law students who demonstrate financial need or academic merit and a declared interest in labor law.

“I think this a great way to honor and celebrate him at a law school he deeply loved and to which he gave so much of himself.”

Build Your Legacy

Including Detroit Mercy in your estate plan can be a powerful way for you to honor a loved one’s memory or to simply demonstrate your support for our students. Contact Teri Carroll at (313) 993-1262 or carroltl@udmercy.edu to learn more about creating your Detroit Mercy legacy.