Marcella Driscoll Scholarship Fund
The Marcella Driscoll Scholarship at Regis College was established in 2024 by Marcella’s sister and Regis alumna, Dawn-Marie Driscoll ’68, in honor of her sister.
Marcella was brilliant, funny, and outgoing but suffered from mental health illness throughout her life. With the help of social workers and mental health professionals, Marcella was finally able to receive the care and guidance needed to lead her best life possible.
The Marcella Driscoll Scholarship is dedicated to Susan Allen and Danielle Lubin, Marcella’s two longstanding care managers from Your Elder Experts, a program of Jewish Family and Children's Services. Susan and Danielle gave Marcella many happy years and emulated the patience of saints. With the help of this scholarship, Regis graduates will follow in their footsteps, helping so many others like Marcella.
Recipients of the Marcella Driscoll Scholarship will be Regis students with financial need, with preference given to undergraduates studying social work or mental health.
The scholarship in Marcellas’s name is endowed, and consequently, principal gifts to the fund will never be spent. Scholarships will be created from the earned income on the investment, and Marcella’s legacy will live on perpetually, helping Regis students realize their dreams for future generations. Please read below to learn more about Marcella.
Marcella Driscoll
Marcella was born in 1952 in Framingham; her father Paul was a political columnist, and her mother Wanda was a home economics teacher. Her older sister Dawn-Marie graduated from Regis in 1968 and became a corporate lawyer, later specializing in business ethics.
Marcella was a great writer and thinker. In her sixth-grade autobiography, she wrote, “I think I’d like to be a journalist or freelance writer.” She went off to Brown University with great plans, but unfortunately in her freshman year, she had a breakdown and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.
Marcella’s next 30 years were a struggle where she could not hold a job, refused therapy and medicine, and was in denial of her diagnosis. In 1999 during a hospitalization, a social worker at Mass General Hospital secured legal guardianship, SSDI, and Mass Health for Marcella. In 2003, her sister hired Jewish Family & Children’s Services to manage her care and provide advice.
With constant attention by nurses, social workers, household help, and more, Marcella lived by herself in a studio apartment in Boston for more than 20 years. She began to accept the reality of her illness and the importance of medicine, although hospitalizations and medical crises persisted. She volunteered at a church thrift shop and had many neighbors who watched out for her. Marcella was a devout Catholic and loved music in church. She had little money but was generous to relatives and friends. She remembered everyone’s birthday, anniversary, and holidays and had her Christmas cards written by August—always using Metropolitan Museum of Art religious cards.
In 2023 at age 70 she died quietly, in a Catholic hospital, after complications from an infection compounded by diabetes and kidney failure. After Marcella died, one family member asked, “What did her life teach you?”
One clear answer is the importance of social workers and mental health professionals, who saved her life and gave her many happy years. This scholarship fund is dedicated to those who saved Marcella's life, with hopes that future Regis graduates can pursue their dreams of helping others.
