Nakashima Foundation Honors Scott and Hella McVay at Peace Award Celebration

By Barbara A. Preston l June 18, 2021

On a bitter cold day in February, 1981, the beloved home of Scott and Hella McVay on Province Line Road burned to the ground. “It was an absolutely shattering day,” Scott says. “We lost everything at the 22-and-ahalf- year mark in our marriage.”

In addition to Scott’s poems, the McVays, who now live in Stonebridge, lost their beloved Nakashima furniture. The McVays are longtime supporters of George Nakashima’s work—but also of his vision for world peace.

Scott and Hella McVay holding the carefully crafted Nakashima Foundation Peace Award with Mira Nakashima.

Scott is a poet, naturalist and philanthropist who worked tirelessly to promote the arts, education, women’s issues, environmental stewardship and animal welfare.

In this pursuit, he has directed or served on the boards of numerous institutions—the Geraldine R. Dodge, W. Alton Jones and Robert Sterling Clark foundations, the World Wildlife Fund, the Chautauqua Institution, the Earth Policy Institute, and Grounds for Sculpture. He was the creator of the Dodge Poetry Festival and he and Hella created the Poetry Trail at the D&R Greenway in Princeton.

Article continues after ad from our sponsor.

The Nakashima Foundation for Peace held its second Peace Award Ceremony virtually on May 23, and honored Scott and Hella, among the first of George Nakashima’s devoted friends to learn of his Dream of Peace Altars for the World and Nakashima’s kindred spirits in the realms of integrating art, poetry, and science.