UHart gets $2.3M gift to fund pupils

The University of Hartford will use a $2.3 million gift from the estate of the first female officer of a Hartford insurer to fund students’ education.

The bequest is on behalf of the estate of Marion Bills, a longtime Aetna employee who died in 1970, the school said Wednesday.

Bill was a trustee of Hillyer College, one of the three schools that later became the University of Hartford.

The Michigan native came to Aetna in Hartford as a consultant in 1925. She became an officer in 1926, the first woman to do so at any Hartford insurance company.

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She retired as Aetna assistant secretary in 1955.