No Strings Attached to Corset Heiress’s Giving

Gloria Gossard ’44 believes it’s important to give back to one’s community, and she has spent much of her life doing that. Gossard, whose father, Henry Williamson Gossard, founded Chicago’s H.W. Gossard corset company in 1901, is a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, where she is active in the arts.

One of her favorite philanthropies in Steamboat is the Steamboat Springs Arts Council, an umbrella group that offers art shows as well as theatrical and musical performances, and hosts a variety of fund-raising events. Gossard underwrites the costs for the council’s Kaleidoscope for Kids, which features children’s art, cooking, and music programs.

“I love music of all kinds,” Gossard says, especially the big-band music popular when she was at CC, where she majored in sociology. Her love of music inspires her giving to two Colorado musical institutions. For more than a decade in the early 1980s and 1990s, she sponsored a Central City Opera matinee. Over the years, Gossard has underwritten a matinee performance of almost every famous opera the troupe put on. With her brother and sister-in-law, she also made contributions to the Colorado Symphony.

However, it’s in Steamboat Springs, where her father owned a ranch and the family moved when she was 10, that she sees the full impact of her philanthropy and community volunteerism. “Steamboat has grown to be quite a ski resort, and more importantly, quite a community,” she says. “People here are devoted to sports, but we want to round out what we have to offer. We want people to know that the arts are important here."