Amy and Richard Wallman Give U. of Chicago Another $75 Million Gift

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of Chicago

Amy and Richard Wallman pledged $75 million to launch an effort to raise an additional $75 million from other donors to create 30 endowed professorships across the university. The couple will match new gifts and pledges of $2.5 million or more from other donors with $2.5 million. Each professorship will be named for the individual donors who join the Wallmans’ challenge, and the resulting new faculty will be called the Wallman Society of Fellows.

The couple met at the business school in the 1970s. Amy Wallman earned an M.B.A. in 1975 and joined the accounting giant Ernst & Young. She retired as an audit partner there in 2001. Richard Wallman earned an M.B.A. in 1974, began his career with the Ford Motor Company, and later became the chief financial officer and senior vice president at Honeywell International, an industrial technology and manufacturing company, and its predecessor AlliedSignal from 1995 to 2003. He also served in senior posts at IBM and the Chrysler Corporation.

The couple are longtime donors to the university and landed on the Chronicle’s 2017 Philanthropy 50 list after giving the university $75 million to support scholarships, faculty research, and other programs at the Booth School of Business.

School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh

Orland Bethel pledged $25 million through his Orland Bethel Family Foundation to establish the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center where researchers will study such disorders as osteoporosis, degenerative arthritis, fragility fractures, and spinal pathology. The university will contribute an additional $25 million.

Bethel founded Hillandale Farms, which produces chicken eggs, in 1958 in Greensburg, Pa. Bethel said in a news release that he is giving the money as a way to thank the doctors and medical institution that helped him when he was suffering with debilitating spinal pain. He was relieved of his pain, and his function and motion were restored after he underwent surgery and treatment at the university’s medical center.

Per Scholas

MacKenzie Scott gave $20 million through her Yield Giving fund. The gift is unrestricted. The nonprofit offers tuition-free training in cloud computing, cybersecurity, data and software engineering, and other technology areas. The organization partners with employers to connect its students, 85 percent of whom are people of color, with technology jobs.

Scott is a novelist who has given over $14 billion to more than 1,600 nonprofits over the last three years. Her estimated $37 billion fortune comes from stock she holds in the online retailing giant Amazon, which she helped to found with her former husband Jeff Bezos nearly 30 years ago.

West Texas A&M University

Alex and Cheryl Fairly gave $20 million to support the Hill Institute, an interdisciplinary academy of researchers, teachers, and students at the university. Named for the late Joseph Hill, the university’s second president and its longest-serving leader, the institute is centered on 10 values: listed by university officials as “trust, family life, hard work, regard for others, personal responsibility, compatriotism and patriotism, virtue, faith, personal and civic loyalty, and rugged individualism.”

Alex Fairly owns and is president of the Fairly Group, an Amarillo, Tex., consulting firm that specializes in corporate risk, human capital and benefits, and other areas; it works with agribusiness, transportation, and manufacturing companies. The couple are alumni of the university.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Jay and Patty Baker gave $10 million to expand the museum. When complete, a new event space named for the Bakers will present live music, and educational and other programs. This is the second gift the Bakers have given for the museum’s expansion and renovation efforts in recent years. In 2018, they contributed $5 million to back improvements to the museum.

Jay Baker served as president of the national retail chain Kohl’s Department Stores before retiring in 2000. He started his career at Saks Fifth Avenue and later served in executive positions there and then at the retail division for British American Tobacco in the United States. In 1986, he partnered with two other investors to buy Kohl’s, and the three men took the company public in 1992.

Patty Baker is a Broadway producer who has produced numerous Broadway shows over the last 15 years. She has earned two Tony Awards for Memphis: The Musical and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She has served on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Board of Directors since 2008. 

Pomona College

Masago Shibuya Armstrong left $1 million to support the Towa Yamaguchi Shibuya Scholarship Fund, which Armstrong launched in honor of her mother many years ago. Armstrong served as the college’s registrar from 1955 until she retired in 1985, and she stayed closely involved with the college until she died last year at 102.

The daughter of Japanese immigrants, Armstrong was born in Menlo Park, Calif., and was one of six siblings. Her parents started a flower farm, and over time, the family became one of the most prosperous flower growers in the area, known especially for their chrysanthemums.

Armstrong earned a master’s degree from Stanford University in 1941, but her and her family’s lives were turned upside down the following year. They were imprisoned in the internment camp for Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, the result of an executive order issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of World War II. Armstrong’s mother died there, and her family was not released until April 1945. Armstrong worked at Stanford after the war where she met Hubert Coslet Armstrong, an academic and consultant. They married in 1949.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.