St. Louis Opera Gets $45 Million, and a Google Founder’s Father Pledges $1 Million for Dance Post (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Opera Theatre Saint Louis

Phyllis Brissenden left an estimated $45 million for endowment, which will more than double the opera company’s endowment to roughly $80 million.

Brissenden, who died in December at age 86, had been a life-long donor to the opera company, starting with its first season in 1976. Prior to her bequest, she had given the organization a total of $2.5 million during her lifetime. Brissenden served on the company’s Board of Directors for many years and led its National Patrons Council from 2010 to 2017.

She had worked for the United Way in St. Louis during World War II and was the widow of Walter Brissenden, a retired Bell Telephone executive who died in 1986.

University of Mississippi

Brothers Jim and Thomas Duff pledged $26 million to help pay for a new science, technology, engineering, and mathematics building.

The Duffs founded Duff Capital Investors, a Columbia, Miss., holding company through which they own a variety of businesses, including Southern Tire Mart, which their late father, Ernest, started in 1973.

The Duffs have a long history with the university. Ernest Duff earned undergraduate and law degrees there, and Jim Duff’s daughters, Margaret and Caroline, are law and liberal arts students, respectively.

University of Alabama

C.T. and Kelley Fitzpatrick committed $20 million to support the Culverhouse College of Business and establish the C.T. and Kelley Fitzpatrick Center for Value Investing. Some of the money will also go toward the university’s intercollegiate athletics programs.

C.T. Fitzpatrick founded Vulcan Value Partners, an investment-management firm in Birmingham, Ala. He earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce and business administration from the university in 1986. The university’s Manderson Graduate School of Business is named for Kelley Fitzpatrick’s father, Lewis Manderson.

Syracuse University

Chuck Klaus and Marylyn Turner gave $15 million to back scholarships and two immersion programs within the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ School of Art.

The immersion programs — Art Week in LA and Turner Semester — were founded by the couple. The first allows student artists to visit Los Angeles during spring break to explore the city’s museums and visit galleries and contemporary artists’ studio. The other one provides support for three master of fine arts students to experience the arts of the West Coast while living and working in San Pedro, Calif., for a semester.

Turner is a businesswoman who established the Grand House Management Company, which redevelops properties in San Pedro, Calif. Earlier in her career, she worked as a junior-high and high-school art teacher and later earned a law degree. She received bachelor of fine arts and master of science degrees from Syracuse in 1956 and 1957, respectively.

Klaus worked as a producer, announcer, and host of programs covering vintage recordings, film, and film music for the public broadcaster WCNY. He was also a music and drama critic for the Post-Standard, a Syracuse newspaper, for 23 years. He completed graduate coursework in media studies at the university in 2005.

University of California at Los Angeles School of Law

Rob Lovelace and Alicia Miñana donated $5 million to establish the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, and to bolster a number of the law school’s existing immigration programs and law clinics.

Miñana, whose family emigrated from Cuba to Puerto Rico in 1961, earned her law degree from UCLA in 1987. She is an attorney in private practice and serves on the UCLA Law School Board of Advisors. Lovelace is vice chairman of Capital Group, an investment-management firm in Los Angeles.

Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens

J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver channeled a $3 million gift through their Weaver Family Foundation Fund to endow the J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver Chief Curator Position.

J. Wayne Weaver owns the Nine West and Shoe Carnival shoe-store chain. Delores Barr Weaver is managing partner of the John Gorrie Investment Group. The Weavers were majority owners of the Jacksonville Jaguars, the professional football team until 2011.

University of Maryland

Michael Brin pledged $1 million to the School of Theatre, Music, Dance, and Performance Studies to create and endow the Maya Brin Professor in Dance position, which is named for the donor’s late mother.

Brin, the father of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the university, where his mother, who loved ballet, taught in the Russian department for nearly a decade. The Brin family immigrated to the United States from what was then (1979) the Soviet Union.

Brin’s gift is aimed at increasing training in ballet, fostering connections among various dance forms, and supporting dance research and pedagogy.

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