Insurance Executive’s $55-Million to Princeton Heads List of Big Donations

Many institutions have tallied big gifts.

* Princeton University has received $55-million from 1955 alumnus Peter B. Lewis of Cleveland, chairman of the automobile-insurance company Progressive Corporation.

Mr. Lewis directed most of the gift, $35-million, to the Institute for Integrative Genomics, which the university set up last year to study the actions of genes in living organisms.

The remainder of Mr. Lewis’s gift will go to the university’s annual fund and to support several other university projects.

* Jerry Frautschi, retired president of the printing company Webcrafters, in Madison, Wis., has doubled a $50-million gift he made last July to build an arts district in downtown Madison.

The additional $50-million to the Madison Cultural Arts Support Trust will finance the “Overture Project,” which has among its goals new performing- and visual-arts spaces as well as renovations to the Madison Art Center and the Oscar Mayer Theater.

* A. Alfred Taubman, a commercial real-estate developer and chairman of Sotheby’s Holdings, has given $30-million to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Mr. Taubman designated his gift for the the college’s endowment, but placed no other restrictions on its use. The university has renamed the college in his honor.

* John Seeger Holl of Arden Hills, Minn., who amassed a fortune from his family’s refrigeration company, bequeathed $83.5-million to 12 organizations in Minnesota. Three St. Paul-area institutions — Macalester College, Presbyterian Homes & Services, and the Saint Paul Foundation — received $25-million each for endowment.

Mr. Holl attached no stipulations to the income earned from his $25-million gifts. The businessman, who died in April, sold the Seeger Refrigerator Company to the Whirlpool Corporation in 1955. Nine organizations received unrestricted gifts totaling $8.5-million; the largest of those bequests was $5-million to United Way of the St. Paul Area.

* The Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University has received 110 Dutch Old Master drawings from George and Maida Abrams of Newton, Mass. The collection has been valued at up to $20-million.

The trove includes drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt, and other 17th-century artists from the Netherlands. The couple made the gift to encourage research on the Dutch Old Masters, whose appeal among 20th-century collectors has lagged behind that of French and Italian artists.

Mrs. Abrams is president of Very Special Arts Massachusetts, a charity that involves disabled people in arts programs. Her husband is a lawyer and a businessman.

* The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has received $10-million from an anonymous donor for endowment. The gift raises the orchestra’s total endowment to nearly $38-million.

* The Pierpont Morgan Library, in New York, has received $10-million from Eugene V. Thaw, an art collector and dealer, and his wife, Clare, to build a conservation laboratory. The expansion will enable staff members to care for previously neglected items in the museum’s permanent collections.

* Saint Mary’s Mercy Medical Center, in Grand Rapids, Mich., has received $10-million from Richard J. Lacks, Jr., on behalf of his family. The Lacks’ donation will help build a cancer institute.

Mr. Lacks’ father and grandfather founded Lacks Industries, a plastics-molding company. Both Richard J. Lacks, Sr., and John P. Lacks succumbed to cancer within the past two months.

* The Solomon Schechter School of Westchester, in White Plains, N.Y., has received $10-million from M. Mac Schwebel, chairman of the school’s board and retired legal counsel and director at Warner Bros. The kindergarten-through-eighth-grade day school is running a $26-million campaign to build a high school.

* The University of Pittsburgh has received $10-million from John M. Petersen, retired president of the Erie Insurance Group, and his wife, Gertrude, to construct a convocation and events center.

Other recent gifts:

Arts Center Stage (Tex.): $5,000,000 from Morton Topfer of Austin, Tex., vice-chairman of Dell Computer Corporation, and his wife, Angela, for the campaign to transform Palmer Auditorium into a performing-arts center.

Baker U. (Kan.): $2,200,000 bequest from the estate of Virginia Gatch Markham of Topeka, Kan., a high-school Latin and mathematics teacher and a librarian, to endow scholarships, and a $1,100,000 bequest from Charlotte (Lottie) Mason of Mesa, Ariz., a retired elementary-school teacher who owned a construction company with her husband, John, to endow scholarships.

Barry U. (Fla.): $5,000,000 from R. Kirk Landon of Miami, chairman of American Bankers Insurance Group, to construct a student center, and $1,000,000 from B. Landon of Miami, an art collector, for the capital campaign.

Bethesda Hospital Foundation (Md.): $1,700,000 bequest from the estate of Florence J. Clough of Gulf Stream, Fla., widow of Sherman Clough, a pharmaceuticals executive, for the endowment campaign.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America (Ga.): $1,000,000 from Shaquille O’Neal of Los Angeles, a member of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, to help create a computer program to teach Internet etiquette and safety to youths.

Case Western Reserve U. (Ohio): $1,250,000 each from Gertrude Donnelly Hess of Rocky River, Ohio, a physician, for a professorship in cancer research, and from James Jewell of Mt. Clemens, Mich., an obstetrician-gynecologist, for a professorship in genetics.

Children’s Medical Center of Dallas: $5,000,000 from H. R. (Bum) Bright of Dallas, an oil and gas executive and former owner of the Dallas Cowboys football team, and his wife, Peggy, for a new outpatient facility.

Crossroads Centre at Antigua: $5,000,000 from the musician Eric Clapton of London, who auctioned 100 of his guitars for this drug and alcohol treatment center in the Caribbean.

Georgetown U. (D.C.): $1,000,000 from Ted Leonsis of Washington, president of AOL Interactive Properties and majority owner of the Washington Capitals hockey team, and his wife, Lynn, for the American-studies program and a new performing-arts facility.

Goucher College (Md.): $3,200,000 bequest from the estate of Edwin T. Stackhouse of Shickshinny, Pa., a coal and lumber seller and a banker, for scholarships, and $1,000,000 from Eleanor Kratz Denoon of Newtown, Pa., a reading specialist, tutor, and investor, to establish a creative-writing center.

Greater Green Bay Community Foundation (Wis.): $2,500,000 from an anonymous donor for scholarships for area students to attend colleges and universities.

Hamilton College (N.Y.): $1,500,000 from Robert S. Morris of Stamford, Conn., founder and managing partner of Olympus Partners, to establish a professorship in economics.

Harvard U. (Mass.): $1,000,000 from Graham Gund of Cambridge, Mass., an architect, to support architecture exhibitions at the Art Museums and the Graduate School of Design.

Hollins U. (Va.): $1,000,000 from an anonymous alumna to help construct the Richard Wetherill Visual Arts Center.

The Johns Hopkins U. (Md.): $2,800,000 from Peter Angelos of Baltimore, a lawyer and majority owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, for programs at the Downtown Center of the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education.

Lafayette College (Pa.): $1,000,000 from John W. Landis of Weston, Mass., a nuclear engineer, and his wife, Muriel, to endow a community-service program.

Lawrence U. (Wis.): $1,700,000 bequest from the estate of Arthur M. Hanson of Oshkosh, Wis., a retired scientist at the Division of Labs and Research of the New York State Department of Health, to endow scholarships.

Marquette U. (Wis.): $2,000,000 from Robert J. Sullivan of Milwaukee, retired vice-chairman of Sullivan-Schein Dental, a dental-supply company, to help construct a facility at the School of Dentistry, and a $1,650,000 bequest from the estate of Eugene A. Habermann of Milwaukee, a retired time-study analyst at Briggs & Stratton Corporation, which manufactures engines, to establish a professorship in chemistry.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (N.Y.): $1,000,000 from Laura Johnson of New York, widow of Raymond Johnson, former president of Saks Fifth Avenue, for the Costume Institute.

Michigan Technological U.: $2,000,000 from Robert Carnahan of Ann Arbor, Mich., president of Thixomat, a consortium of marketing companies, to endow a professorship in business and technology.

Milwaukee Foundation: $1,100,000 bequest from the estate of Emily Pinkalla of Milwaukee, who with her late husband, Hamilton, founded a chemical-supply company and a bank, for a fund that supports Alverno College, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and St. Josaphat Basilica.

Montclair State U. (N.J.): $1,250,000 from Margaret McCormack Sokol of New York, a mathematics and science teacher and widow of Herman Sokol, former president of Bristol-Myers, to establish a professorship in chemistry.

Montgomery College (Md.): $1,300,000 from Paul Peck of McLean, Va., a computer-systems manager for the U.S. Customs Service and an investor, for the Humanities Institute, which serves all three campuses in the system, and for the art department at the Rockville campus.

Northwestern U. (Ill.): $2,000,000 from the lawyers at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, in Chicago, to establish a center for trial strategy at the School of Law.

Ohio State U.: $2,000,000 from Marilyn Jenne of Amherst, Ohio, a retired secretary, to endow a professorship in equine medicine and research; $1,500,000 from Robert Rainier of East Lyme, Conn., a retired veterinarian, to endow a professorship in industrial veterinary research; and $1,500,000 from Barbara Trueman of Amlin, Ohio, president of TrueSports Inc., to endow a professorship in equine clinical medicine and surgery.

Ohio U.: $2,500,000 from Will Konneker of St. Louis, co-founder of Nuclear Research & Development, and his wife, Ann Lee, to endow professorships; $1,600,000 from an anonymous donor for the Russ College of Engineering and Technology; and $1,200,000 from C. David Snyder of Lakewood, Ohio, former chairman of Real Logic Inc. and majority owner of Snyder Brewing Group, for the College of Business.

Purdue U. (Ind.): $1,000,000 from Earl Butz of West Lafayette, Ind., Secretary of Agriculture in the Nixon and Ford Administrations, for the Department of Agricultural Economics.

Saint Michael’s College (Vt.): $1,200,000 from the Society of St. Edmund, the order of priests and brothers who founded the college in 1904, for its upcoming capital campaign.

U. of Central Florida: $1,480,000 from Al and Nancy Burnett of Maitland, Fla., former owners of a Mercedes-Benz automobile dealership, to expand the university’s Honors College.

U. of Kentucky: $2,000,000 from James F. Hardymon of Lexington, Ky., and Naples, Fla., retired chairman of Textron Corporation, and his wife, Gay, to endow scholarships and professorships at the College of Engineering.

U. of Mississippi: $4,000,000 from Will Galtney of Houston, chairman of the Galtney Group, a holding company for insurance brokerages, and his wife, Susanne, to create an academic computer center, and $2,250,000 from Crymes G. Pittman of Jackson, Miss., a lawyer, and his wife, Scarlotte, to help develop a seminar for first-year students.

U. of Southern California: $2,000,000 from Andrew J. Viterbi of La Jolla, Cal., vice-chairman of Qualcomm, and his wife, Erna, to endow a professorship in communications at the School of Engineering.

U. of Tennessee at Knoxville: $2,500,000 bequest from the estate of Arthur E. Yates of Flintstone, Ga., retired president of Yates Bleachery Company, to endow graduate fellowships and undergraduate scholarships at the College of Arts and Sciences.

United States Holocaust Memorial Council (D.C.): $2,000,000 from Albert Abramson of Bethesda, Md., a construction executive, to establish a professorship in Holocaust studies at Brandeis University. The professorship will be run jointly by the university and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Vassar College (N.Y.): $2,500,000 bequest from the estate of Catherine Pelton Durrell of Millbrook, N.Y., who worked for 30 years at General Electric, for unrestricted use.

William Penn College (Iowa): $2,200,000 from Katsumi Iida of Tokyo, chairman of Tokyo General Corporation, to endow scholarships and support operations.