February 10, 2014 | Read Time: 1 minute
Amount donated in 2013: $66-million
Beneficiary: Medical College of Georgia Foundation at Georgia Regents University
Background: Dr. Harrison was a retired chief of surgery at St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta, a cattle rancher, and a real-estate investor.
Dr. Harrison, who was 86 when he died in 2012, left about $66-million to the Medical College of Georgia Foundation at Georgia Regents University to endow scholarships and professorships at the medical school.
Born to a farming family, he earned his medical degree from the college in 1948, when he was only 22, and served as chairman of the foundation in 1974 and 1979.
The donor earmarked most of his bequest for scholarships because he wanted to give medical students from Georgia a chance at a top-level medical education in their home state.
“It really boils down to a basic principle of providing what input I can to develop a medical school where a gifted individual from the state, knowing no better or having no choice from a financial standpoint of attending the state medical school, can look back 20 or 30 years later and have no regrets or questions of the quality of the medical education he received,” he said in a speech in 2004 about why he supported the institution.
During his lifetime, he gave the college more than $15-million.
Those who knew him say Dr. Harrison often cited his humble beginnings as another reason he supported the medical college over the years.
“He was so proud that Medical College of Georgia took a country boy and made a doctor out of him,” said Jim Osborne, chief executive of the college’s foundation.
The Philanthropy 50: Browse the full list of America’s most generous donors in 2013.
Learn more: See this donor’s listing in our database of major gifts, America’s Top Donors.
