Ford Heiress Leaves $50-Million to Detroit College; Other Gifts

Nine institutions have received big gifts:

• The College for Creative Studies, in Detroit, has received a $50-million bequest from Josephine Ford, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., for its endowment. Mrs. Ford, the only granddaughter of Henry Ford, the Ford Motor Company founder, died in June. Earnings from the money will be used to increase financial aid for students, expand the number of full-time faculty members, and develop local and international programs.
• Helga Wall-Apelt, an art collector in Sarasota, Fla., has pledged at least $8-million plus a collection of artworks to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art at Florida State University, in Sarasota. The museum said that Ms. Wall-Apelt’s donation would total more than $50-million when the value of the art, the cash donation, and other money she has pledged to support the gallery’s operations are tallied. Ms. Wall-Apelt asked that the cash donation be used to help the museum expand its facilities and be added to the museum’s endowment.
• Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, a global investor and the nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, has made two gifts of $20-million apiece to two universities. He asked that the gift to Georgetown University, in Washington, be used to support and expand its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is housed at the Walsh School of Foreign Service. And he asked Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., to use the money to increase the number of faculty members who focus on Islamic studies, support graduate students, and make rare Islamic texts available in digital format.
• Sid R. and Mercedes Bass, of Fort Worth, have given $25-million to the Metropolitan Opera, in New York. The money, which the donors said could be used for any purpose, will be used primarily to help with short-term financial needs, pay for new productions, and assist efforts to expand the opera’s audience. Mr. Bass is an investor whose fortune stems from oil and other energy holdings inherited from his father, Perry. Mrs. Bass has been a managing director of the opera since 1993 and serves on the boards of several other cultural institutions, including the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Carnegie Hall, in New York.
• The Southwest Washington Medical Center, in Vancouver, has received a $15-million pledge from David Nierenberg, president of Nierenberg Investment Management, in Camas, Wash., and his wife, Patricia, a board member of the medical center’s foundation. The couple earmarked most of the gift to benefit the Women’s and Children’s Center of Excellence, but $2.5-million of the pledge will help construct a nursery for premature infants and $1-million will endow child-care scholarships at the child-care and early-learning center.
• The School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California at Davis has received a $12.6-million bequest from Theodora Peigh, a rancher in Reno, Nev., to set up an endowment for student scholarships.
• Loyola University Chicago has received a $10-million donation from Joan Los Hank, a 1954 graduate of the university, and her husband, William J. Hank, chairman and chief executive officer of the Farnham Investment Group, in Westmont, Ill. The gift is unrestricted.
• The family of Charles E. Lakin, who owns the Lakin Company, a real-estate firm in Omaha, has pledged $10-million to construct a social-services center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, that will house five charities.

Other recent gifts:

Allegheny College (Meadville, Pa.): $1-million pledge from Herb Myers, president and chief executive officer of the Boxlight Corporation, in Poulsbo, Wash., for faculty support and student programs.

Bennington College (Vt.): $1-million pledge from Barbara Ushkow Deane and her husband, Maurice Deane, of New York, to finish renovating the Deane Carriage Barn performance space. Mrs. Deane is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Boy Scouts of America, Abraham Lincoln Council (Springfield, Ill.): $2-million from an anonymous donor to develop a program that will teach boating and sailing skills at the council’s two camps.

Burnham Institute for Medical Research (La Jolla, Calif.): $1-million from Greg Kozmetsky, president of KMS Ventures; his wife, Cindy; and his mother, Ronya, of Austin, Tex., to support research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Kozmetsky’s father, George, co-founder of Teledyne Technologies, died from the disease in 2003.

Centre County Community Foundation (State College, Pa.): $2.3-million bequest from Margaret Schreffler, of Pleasant Gap, Pa., for a field-of-interest fund that benefits elderly people. Mrs. Schreffler, who died in 2001 at the age of 99, worked with her husband in the family’s trucking and automobile businesses.

Coastline Community College (Fountain Valley, Calif.): $1-million from Frank Jao, chief executive officer of the Bridgecreek Group, a real-estate development company in Huntington Beach, Calif., and Chieu Le, owner of the Lee’s Sandwiches chain, in San Jose, Calif., for a campus near Orange County’s Little Saigon neighborhood.

DuPage Community Foundation (Wheaton, Ill.): $1-million from Cleve E. Carney, a retired roofing contractor and a trustee of the foundation, and his wife, Kay Schmitt, a retired rehabilitation counselor, for endowment. The couple live in Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Florida Atlantic U. National Alumni Association (Boca Raton, Fla.): $1-million from Marleen Forkas, a retired fashion designer and clothing manufacturer, and her husband, Harold, a retired businessman, of Boca Raton, to construct an alumni center.

Indiana U.-Purdue U. Fort Wayne: $5-million from Larry Lee, owner of Leepoxy Plastics, in Fort Wayne, for a new indoor track and athletic scholarships.

The Johns Hopkins U. (Baltimore): $4-million bequest from an anonymous donor for unrestricted support at the Whiting School of Engineering and the Sheridan Libraries.

Mills College (Oakland, Calif.): $5.9-million bequest from Eileen Mitchell Gibbs, of Colfax, Calif., for technology, an endowed professorship, and endowments for the natural-sciences building and the Haas Pavilion. Mrs. Gibbs, who died in 2004 at the age of 89, graduated from the college in 1936. Her second husband, Chester Gibbs, was the former owner of the Colfax Independent Telephone Company.

National D-Day Museum (New Orleans): $1-million from Robert A. and Lori Kent Savoie, of New Orleans, for a new exhibit planned as part of the museum’s expansion. Mr. Savoie is general manager of Prescient Technologies and principal of R.A. Ravoie Holdings.

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (Washington): $1-million from Jon Stryker, founder and president of the Arcus Foundation (Kalamazoo, Mich.), for its nationwide campaign to advance equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people through advocacy, organizing, and public education.

Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Fla.): $1.5-million from Harold and Anne Berkley Smith, of Chevy Chase, Md., and Palm Beach, Fla., to endow the position of curator of American art. Ms. Smith serves on the museum’s Board of Trustees.

Parkland Foundation (Dallas): $1-million from Mike and Sammye Myers, of Dallas, to help construct and develop an ambulatory surgery center at Parkland Health & Hospital System. Mr. Myers is chairman and owner of Myers Financial Corporation, in Dallas, and president of Myers Development Corporation, a residential development company in Texas and Missouri.

Pennsylvania State U., Berks County Campus (Reading): $3.6-million bequest from Harold A. Pfreimer, of Wyomissing, Pa., former chief of the utilities branch of the directorate of civil engineering at the U.S. Air Force headquarters, to construct a building to house the business, engineering, and information-technology departments and to support scholarships for engineering students.

Phelps Memorial Hospital Center (Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.): $1-million from an anonymous couple for the center’s new emergency department.

Rocky Mountain College (Billings, Mont.): $3-million from an anonymous donor for unrestricted support and student scholarships.

Salvation Army Metro Washington (D.C.): $3.2-million bequest from Col. Robert W. Thomas and his wife, Vernon Virginia Thomas, owners of the Walker-Thomas Furniture Store (Washington), for an operating endowment for Turning Point, a residential program for homeless women and children. Mr. Thomas died in 2000 and his wife died in 2004.

Southern Oregon U. (Ashland): $2-million bequest from Leon Mulling, a professor emeritus and former dean of the university’s School of Communication, for an endowment for seven scholarships in the School of Arts and Letters. Mr. Mulling died in March at the age of 90.

Southwestern Medical Foundation (Dallas): $1-million from Mike and Sammye Myers, of Dallas, for a campaign at the U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas to raise money for medical research. Mr. Myers is chairman and owner of Myers Financial Corporation, in Dallas, and president of Myers Development Corporation, a residential development company in Texas and Missouri.

St. Joseph Health System Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, Calif.): $5-million from Evert Person, former owner and publisher of The Press Democrat, and his wife, Norma, to expand cardiovascular services at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital’s Heart Institute.

Struthers Parkinson’s Center (St. Louis Park, Minn.): $1.25-million pledge from Evelyn Struthers, of Minneapolis, and her family, as part of a capital campaign to expand the center’s facilities. Mrs. Struthers’s husband, Alan, died of Parkinson’s disease in 1995.

Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (Dallas): $8-million from Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital Management, in Dallas, to build a new conference center.

U. of Denver: $1-million challenge gift from Douglas G. Scrivner, general counsel and secretary at Accenture, and his wife, Mary, of Portola Valley, Calif. The money will be used to establish the Ned Vanda Center for International and Comparative Law at the university’s Sturm College of Law.

U. of Iowa Foundation (Iowa City): $1-million from Donald W. Heineking, chairman of the board of Security State Bank, in Hubbard, Iowa, to endow athletic scholarships in eight sports, including baseball, football, and wrestling.

U. of Oregon: $1-million from Andy Berwick, founder of the Berwick Pacific Corporation, and his wife, Phyllis, of Hillsborough, Calif., for the Oregon Bach Festival. The university also received $1-million from David Katzin, a real-estate developer in Phoenix, also for the festival.

U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas): $1-million from an anonymous donor to help create a pediatric-cancer research center.

U. of Wisconsin at Madison: $2.5-million pledge from David Mandelbaum, a lawyer at Mandelbaum & Mandelbaum, in West Orange, N.J., and a co-owner of the Minnesota Vikings football team, to the Eye Research Institute for a joint research program with the U. of Minnesota.

Washburn U., School of Law (Topeka, Kan.): $1-million from Norm Pozez, chairman of the Uniwest Group, a commercial construction and real-estate company in Falls Church, Va., for an endowed professorship in the Business and Transactional Law Center. Mr. Pozez graduated from the law school in 1980.