Bernard Osher, a native of
Maine, managed the family hardware and plumbing supply business before heading to New York to work for
Oppenheimer & Company. He moved to California and became a founding director of
World Savings and a founder of its parent company
Golden West Financial. He bought the San Francisco auction house
Butterfield & Butterfield in 1970 and sold it in 1999 to
eBay. World Savings merged with
Wachovia Corporation in 2006, which was in turn acquired by
Wells Fargo in 2008. In 1977 he established the Bernard Osher Foundation, headquartered in
San Francisco, which contributes to higher education, the arts, and social services, with education receiving nearly 80 percent of its grants. Osher was impressed by the
Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the
University of San Francisco, and approached the Senior Program at the
University of Southern Maine (USM) with his interest in supporting noncredit programs for older adults. He awarded USM an endowment grant in 2001 to expand its program, which was renamed as the first Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Ed Stolman, a friend of Osher’s who had retired to
Sonoma County, California, approached
Sonoma State University (SSU) to encourage development of an OLLI program. The Osher Foundation made a development grant to SSU which quickly attracted an audience of older student members. Encouraged by the success of these two programs, Osher decided to greatly expand his grant support for similar lifelong learning institutes. ==OLLI program development==