American Technion Society Announces Pledge of $25-Million; Other Recent Donations

Four institutions have received big gifts:

• The American Technion Society, in New York, has received a $25-million pledge from Lorry I. Lokey, founder and chairman of Business Wire, a San Francisco company that distributes press releases, for an engineering and life-sciences research center at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. Researchers at the new center, which will be named for Mr. Lokey, will work on developing new drugs and medical technologies. Mr. Lokey sold Business Wire to Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company, in March.

  Mr. Lokey also donated $10- million to the University of Oregon, in Eugene, for a new science complex.

• George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, a New York firm that manages hedge funds, has pledged $10-million to the Open Society Institute, a network of foundations that Mr. Soros founded in New York in 1993. The money will be used to help cities with more than 250,000 residents develop systems to treat drug addicts.

• The University of California at Irvine has received a $10-million pledge from William H. Gross, the founder and chief investment officer of Pacific Investments Management Company, in Newport Beach, Calif., and his wife, Sue, for stem-cell research. The university has received $2-million of the pledge to pay for equipment, staff salaries, and operating costs for a new center devoted to research on stem cells. The Grosses will pay the remaining $8-million, which will go toward a building for the center, if and when the State of California matches that amount.

Other recent gifts:

City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.): $2-million from Morrie Darnov, a Los Angeles businessman, and his daughter, Sharon, who is a technology consultant. The gift is unrestricted and was made in honor of Mr. Darnov’s wife, Natalie, who died last year. Mr. Darnov also donated a van to transport patients with disabilities around the medical center.

College of Wooster (Ohio): $1-million from an anonymous couple, who graduated from the college in 1956, for endowment.

Harvard U. (Cambridge, Mass.): $2-million from James Chris Miller, a land developer in Tyler, Tex., and his wife, Shirley, for scholarships for graduate students in the business school, the divinity school, and the School of Medicine whose parents are deceased military personnel. Mr. Miller, a retired Air Force colonel, earned an M.B.A. from the business school in 1965.

Hollins U. (Roanoke, Va.): $1-million from Robert T. Priddy, a co-founder and retired chief executive officer of the Dual Drilling Company, in Wichita Falls, Tex., to create an endowment that will support new construction, renovation projects, and facility maintenance.

Iona College (New Rochelle, N.Y.): $1-million from Patrick J. Martin, former president of Storage Technology, in Louisville, Colo., to pay for an addition and new entrance to the Ryan Library. Mr. Martin graduated from Iona in 1962.

U. of North Carolina at Wilmington: $2-million from Herbert and Sylvia Fisher, the owners of Coastal Realty, in Wilmington, to endow a student center.

U. of Notre Dame (Ind.): $3-million from Paul and Linda Demo, of Palm Harbor, Fla., for a new softball stadium. The stadium will be named for the couple’s daughter, Melissa Cook, a 1994 graduate of the university who died in 2002 when scaffolding from a Chicago skyscraper fell on the automobile she was driving. The money comes from a settlement resulting from Ms. Cook’s death.

U. of Toledo (Ohio): $6-million from Charles A. Sullivan, a retired chief executive officer of the Interstate Bakeries Corporation, in Kansas City, Mo., and his wife, Jacqueline. Most of the money — $5-million — is earmarked for construction projects in the athletics department. An additional $500,000 will establish a scholarship in the College of Business Administration, and the remaining $500,000 will establish an honors scholarship fund. Mr. Sullivan graduated from the business school in 1959.