The “Chocolate Chip Bequest” of Dacie Moses

Dacie Moses was a librarian at the Carleton College in Northfield, MN, in the U.S.  She was awarded an honorary master of arts degree in 1969. 

But her real claim to fame, both in living legacy as well as that left for future generations is the Dacie Moses House.  During her life, Dacie invited students to her house for freshly baked cookies, Sunday brunches (for up to 50 people), to hold conversations, watch TV or play the piano, snack from her refrigerator or call home from her phone. 

Valuing the creation of community around warm chocolate chip cookies and conversation, Darcie did one more thing before she died in 1983 at the age of 97:  she wrote a will in which she donated her house to the Carleton Alumni Association.  She instructed: that her house be used “in substantially the same manner as it was used during my lifetime, so that it may continue to be available as a hostel to the students and alumni of Carleton College … that the apartment located on the second floor of my home continue to be rented, and that the rents received therefrom be applied to the upkeep, maintenance, repair and improvement of the homestead.”  See:  http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/dacie/purpose/

Two students still live there each year, overseeing and caring for the house, which continues to be a student and alumni gathering place.  Her own bedroom and private bath are rented out as a hostel to Carleton visitors.  A trust she left pays for the ingredients for the cookies and brunches.  And the house has one new rule in keeping with the original spirit of Dacie’s home:  left-over cookies never leave the premises, instead – they are stored in a cookie jar for other visitors, to ensure the trust funds are not depleted.

The following tribute was written about this legacy: 

"Let it (Dacie's home) become a place of ministry, the rarest kind of ministry, a ministry not of preaching or persuasion or programming, but of simple hospitality - for this was the ministry Dacie performed over all those long and faithful years... In the hospitable space of Dacie's house we have always been free to be who we are without embarrassment, inadequacy or shame."  (from the Carleton VOICE, Vol. 46, No. 3, p.34, by Parker J. Palmer, alumni 1961)

With a only small estate, Dacie Moses and her big heart nevertheless created a large, and very personal, lasting legacy that will benefit many who will never even meet her.