N.Y. College Gets $120-Million in Pledges for Campaign; Other Large Gifts

The following nonprofit institutions have received large donations:

• Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., has received an unrestricted $50-million pledge from Leon Levy, a retired general partner at Odyssey Partners, a hedge fund in New York, and a trustee of the college, for its capital drive. Other members of the board of trustees together committed an additional $70-million.

• A woman from Aurora, N.Y., Ruth Price Thomas, has left a bequest worth more than $40-million to three higher-education institutions and five other nonprofit groups.

Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., and Wells College, in Aurora, will each receive approximately $20-million from Mrs. Thomas’s estate for endowment. She also left $100,000 each to the Cayuga County Community College Foundation and the American Red Cross of Cayuga County, and $50,000 each to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in New York, the Cayuga County SPCA, the Cayuga Health Association’s Meals-on-Wheels program, and the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, in Auburn, N.Y.

Mrs. Thomas, who died in August, founded a company in New York that designed retail displays. Her husband, Leonard Brinton Thomas, worked in the legal department of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company.

• The University of Idaho, in Moscow, has received a pledge of $24-million from Thomas C. Wright and the Wright Foundation, in Kirkland, Wash.

Mr. Wright founded the Wright Group, which produced literacy materials for young children and is now owned by McGraw-Hill. He designated his gift to benefit academic programs and scholarships, primarily in the university’s College of Education. Mr. Wright has given the university charitable remainder trusts worth $8.5-million, and committed to give the rest through annual payments. Any amount remaining after Mr. Wright’s death will be donated through his estate. The university could not say what portion of the donation would come from the foundation.

Other recent big gifts:

American Diabetes Association Research Foundation (Alexandria, Va.): $1-million from Edsel B. Ford II, of Detroit, and his wife, Cynthia, for research on a diabetes-treatment method called islet-cell replacement.

Bank Street College of Education (New York): $4-million from Gilbert Kerlin, a lawyer in New York, and his wife, Sally, to endow a fund to improve the teaching of environmental sciences in New York–area schools.

Boy Scouts of America–Gulf Ridge Council (Tampa, Fla.): $1-million pledge from Carl Lindell Jr., a Tampa businessman, for endowment.

California Community Foundation (Los Angeles): $2-million bequest from the stage and screen actress Alexis Smith and her late husband, Craig Stevens, who starred in the television show Peter Gunn, to create a fund to support charitable organizations in such fields as animal welfare, the arts, education, the environment, health care, and housing.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Va.): $1-million from Royce R. Baker, of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and his wife, Kathryn McCormick Baker, for its capital campaign.

Corcoran College of Art and Design (Washington): $1-million bequest from Frederica Ellis, who died in February, to establish a scholarship fund in honor of her late husband, Arthur, a retired photographer for The Washington Post.

Duke U. (Durham, N.C.): $1.1-million from Harold L. (Spike) Yoh, a former chairman of Day

Goodman Theatre (Chicago): $1-million from Deborah A. Bricker, chairman of the theater’s board, and her daughter, Kelly A. Rosen, to support a theater program for children.

Lawrence U. (Appleton, Wis.): $2.5-million bequest from Marjorie M. Freund, of Washington, who died in 2000, to endow a scholarship fund.

Lincoln Land Community College Foundation (Springfield, Ill.): $1-million bequest from L. Philip Trutter, an architect who died in 2000, for a scholarship fund and to establish a museum to display artifacts from around the world collected by Mr. Trutter and his late wife, Mary Kathryn Trutter.

Magid Foundation (Philadelphia): $1-million from Larry Magid, a concert promoter, and his wife, Mickey, to establish a foundation that will be administered by the Philadelphia Foundation and that will support the William Cullen Bryant Elementary School, a public school in Philadelphia.

Marian College of Fond du Lac (Wis.): $1.4-million bequest from Ross Galbreath, owner of the RuMar Manufacturing Corporation, in Mayville, Wis., for scholarships.

Mercy Foundation (Sacramento): $15-million pledge from Alex G. Spanos, a businessman from Stockton, Calif., to help build a cardiovascular center.

Minnesota Medical Foundation (Minneapolis): $2.3-million pledge from an anonymous donor to support research on Hurler syndrome, a fatal genetic disease, in the pediatrics department of the U. of Minnesota–Twin Cities; and a $1-million pledge from Michael E. Dougherty, of Wayzata, Minn., who founded a financial-service company that bears his name, and his wife, Kathleen A. Dougherty, to endow a chair in prostate-cancer research at the U. of Minnesota Cancer Center.

Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Fla.): $1-million from Ralph Saltzman, founder of Design Tex, a textile company that was purchased by Steelcase, and his wife, Muriel, for the museum’s capital campaign.

Ohio State U. (Columbus): $2.5-million pledge from Richard L. Shelly, the chairman of the Shelly Company, a construction and paving company in Thornville, Ohio, for the athletics department.

Pacific Lutheran U. (Tacoma, Wash.): $4-million from Peter Wang, of Pebble Beach, Calif., a professor, and his wife, Grace, who oversees the couple’s real-estate investments, to establish a center for international programs.

Pennsylvania State U. (University Park): $3-million pledge from Ronald R. Davenport, of Pittsburgh, chairman of the Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation, and his wife, Judith Loftin Davenport, a dentist and co-founder of the Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation, to endow two professorships, one in finance or marketing and one in biological science.

Purdue U. (West Lafayette, Ind.): $9.7-million from Florence E. Perry, whose late husband, William, earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the university in 1938, to augment an endowed chair in mechanical engineering.

Southwestern Medical Foundation (Dallas): $3.5-million from Steven McKnight, of Dallas, a co-founder of Tularik, a pharmaceutical company in San Francisco, for research at the U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

U. of California at Los Angeles: $2.8-million from Milton (Curly) Krieger, who founded a manufacturing company, to help expand the university’s child-care facilities.

U. of Iowa Foundation (Iowa City): $10-million from Marvin A. Pomerantz, of Des Moines, chairman of the Gaylord Container Corporation and Mid-America Group, and his wife, Rose Lee Pomerantz, to help construct a building that will house the university’s career center, university offices, classrooms, and an auditorium.

U. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston): $8-million from six Texas lawyers who represented the state in its lawsuit against several tobacco companies. The lawyers were F. Kenneth Bailey and John E. Williams Jr., of Williams Bailey, in Houston; Harold W. Nix and C. Cary Patterson, of Nix Patterson & Roach, in Daingerfield; John M. O’Quinn, of O’Quinn & Laminack, in Houston; and Walter Umphrey, of the Provost & Umphrey Law Firm, in Beaumont.

Ursinus College (Collegeville, Pa.): $1.2-million bequest from William L. Hamilton, of Philadelphia, a physician who was the director of student health at Temple U. when he died in 1999, for scholarships.

Wave Hill (Bronx, N.Y.): $4-million from Gilbert Kerlin, a New York lawyer and founding chairman of Wave Hill, and his wife, Sally, to endow an environmental-science education fund at this estate, which includes gardens and a cultural center.

Western Kentucky U. (Bowling Green): $3.5-million bequest from Mary Peal Hutto, an investor and English teacher in Stuart, Fla., who died in April, to endow a scholarship fund.

U. of Wyoming Foundation (Laramie): $1-million pledge from John Clay, of Cheyenne, Wyo., a senior vice president at the Cheyenne office of Dain Rauscher, an investment company, and his wife, Esther, to endow a fund to bring artists to the university’s campus, and to expand scholarship funds previously established by the Clays.