Delgado Community College continues the celebration of its 90th Anniversary year with several special events scheduled for Wednesday, November 23 – Founder’s Day at Delgado.

At 9:45 a.m., Delgado students will place a memorial wreath at the tomb of Isaac Delgado, the businessman/philanthropist whose gift established in 1921 the trades school on City Park Avenue in New Orleans that grew to become today’s multi-campus Delgado Community College.

Isaac Delgado was born November 23, 1839, and the placing of the memorial wreath on this date is a Founder’s Day tradition observed by generations of Delgado students. The event is sponsored by the Delgado Student Government Association.

The Delgado tomb is located in Metairie Cemetery, approximately one-half mile from the college’s City Park Campus and 1.5 miles from another of Isaac Delgado’s gifts to the city, the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Also on Nov. 23, Delgado will debut via its website, www.dcc.edu, a new video production titled “Delgado at 90.” The 20-minute program features a narrative history of Delgado Community College illuminated by first-person interviews with notable alumni, faculty, staff and civic leaders as well as archival and contemporary photographs and illustrations.

The third special event scheduled Nov. 23 at Delgado is the publication at www.dcc.edu of a new, illustrated essay on Isaac Delgado and his legacy to the City of New Orleans, which includes landmark gifts to Charity Hospital as well as Delgado Community College and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Delgado made his fortune as a sugar broker and gave it away in a series of gifts carefully designed to benefit the public.

Written by historian Robert Monie, a lifelong Mid-City resident whose family has worked at Delgado Community College for nearly 70 years, the essay titled “A Civic-Minded Man in an Uncivil World” explains how the vision and generosity of Isaac Delgado a century ago make New Orleans a healthier, better-educated and culturally richer city today than it might have been without him.

Monie’s essay is part of an ongoing series of illustrated stories posted on Delgado’s 90th Anniversary website: http://www.dcc.edu/delgado90/. The site collects and shares a wide array of information that helps document and explain how Delgado Community College has grown from a trades school with 75 male students enrolled in the fall of 1921 to become a fully accredited community college serving 30,000 diverse students in the fall of 2011.