 From those student quarters, she watched construction, in 1932, of the George Washington Bridge, moving her to ponder the ways this estuary connected trade to the Mississippi River, where her family's commercial wealth had begun through American Civil War-era trade.With sustained philanthropic activity over the next 75 years, she supported restoration of the Hudson River for community enjoyment, with particular focus on the efforts of the Scenic Hudson, Teatown Lake Reservation, Stone Barns Center, and Westchester Community College.Frontiers of medicine also fascinated Kathryn, who had vivid memories of the 1918 flu pandemic, which infected 500 million people around the globe, killing 4 percent of the world's population.