$150-Million Trust Will Benefit 13 Charities in Alabama; Other Gifts to Nonprofit Groups

Three donors have made big gifts:

• Lucille Stewart Beeson, of Birmingham, Ala., has bequeathed an estimated $150-million to benefit 13 Birmingham-area charities. In her will, Mrs. Beeson directed that the donation be used to endow a perpetual trust, which will pay out a portion of its interest to each of the groups.

  The Salvation Army of Jefferson County, the Jimmy Hale Mission, United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Birmingham, the Alabama Sheriff’s Boys and Girls Ranches, the Baptist Hospitals Foundation of Birmingham, Canterbury United Methodist Church, and Gateway Family and Child Services will each receive 10.6 percent of the interest earned by the trust. An additional six groups — the Birmingham Humane Society, the Christian Service Mission, the charity fund of the Junior League of Birmingham, the Alabama Zoological Society, the Birmingham Botanical Society, and the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham — will each receive 4.3 percent.

  Mrs. Beeson, who died in January at age 95, and her late husband, Dwight, a retired insurance executive, had no children.

• The Johns Hopkins University will receive $100-million over 10 years from an anonymous donor to create a malaria institute. The institute, at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, will attempt to develop a malaria vaccine and other new antimalaria drugs.
• A Los Angeles woman has bequeathed $38.3-million to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for new research.

  The gift from Fern McAlister, who died in February at age 93, will establish the McAlister Clinical Research Program, which will bring scholars to the hospital. Mrs. McAlister’s husband, Harold, left a trust worth $9.8-million to the hospital when he died in 1981 at age 86.

Other big gifts:

Coldwater Community Schools (Mich.): $6-million bequest from Max Larsen, who owned a Ford dealership and died in 1998, to build an elementary school to be named for Mr. Larsen.

Deloitte & Touche Foundation (Wilton, Conn.): $1-million from J. Michael Cook, former chairman of the foundation and of Deloitte & Touche, in New York, and his wife, Mary Anne, to endow the American Accounting Association Doctoral Consortium, an annual conference that brings together accounting faculty members and doctoral students.

Hartford Seminary (Conn.): $6.2-million from the estate of George A. Gay, a Hartford businessman who died in 1940 at age 87, for endowment.

Southern Methodist U. (Dallas): $1-million from Jerry Jones, of Dallas, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and his wife, Gene, for construction of a special-events hall at the Meadows Museum.

Texas Woman’s U. (Denton): $3.9-million trust from the estate of Mary Bryan Reitch, a teacher in Mineola, Tex., who died in 1999 at age 92, for scholarships.

U. of San Francisco: $2.5-million from Alfred S. Chuang, co-founder of BEA Systems, a software company in San Jose, Calif., to help build and endow a computer lab.

Compiled by LAURA HRUBY