U. of North Carolina, Santa Clara U. Receive Big Donations; Other Gifts

Two universities have received large gifts:

• The University of North Carolina has received $25-million from an anonymous donor to study human genetics. The donation to the Michael Hooker Center for Proteomics will support an effort to catalog the proteins in human cells.
• Lorry I. Lokey, a high-technology entrepreneur from Atherton, Calif., has pledged $20-million over five years to Santa Clara University, where he serves on the board of trustees.

  Mr. Lokey, 74, who founded Business Wire, a commercial news wire, earmarked $15-million of the donation for a “learning center,” which will add to the resources of the existing library with expanded access to electronic databases, documents, and publications, multimedia conferencing, and other new technology. The university has not yet decided whether to renovate the current library or to construct a new building for the center. The remainder of the gift will endow undergraduate scholarships.

Other big gifts:

Bluefield College (Va.): $1-million bequest for endowment from Frances Anderson Stallard, of Richmond, who died in 1999 at age 91, and whose late husband, Beecher, was a lawyer and served in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Evangel U. (Springfield, Mo.): $4.6-million from Lawrence Barnett, of Fort Worth, a former businessman, and his wife, Alletha, to help build a fine-arts center.

Griffith Observatory (Los Angeles): $1-million from Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Mr. Spock on the television show Star Trek, and his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, to help renovate and expand the observatory.

Juniata College (Huntingdon, Pa.): $2-million from Barry Halbritter, president of Midstate Tool & Supply, a tool manufacturer in Altoona, Pa., and his wife, Marlene, director of publications at Midstate, to help build a center for the performing arts.

Longwood College (Farmville, Va.): $2.7-million bequest from Mary Farley Ames Lee, a 1938 graduate who died in 1999 at age 82. The gift includes a farm in Mount Holly, Va., valued at $1-million, that will be used for environmental research; $1.5-million for an endowment to support the farm; and $200,000 for scholarships.

Palmer College of Chiropractic (Davenport, Iowa): $3.2-million bequest from Frank Sartz, a chiropractor in Knoxville who died in 1999. Dr. Sartz earmarked $600,000 for a scholarship fund, and the remainder for endowment.

Portland Museum of Art (Me.): $4-million bequest from William Thon, of Port Clyde, Me., a painter who died in 2000 at age 94, to create the Helen E. and William E. Thon Endowment Fund, which will support the museum’s biennial shows, which highlight the work of artists from Maine, and other exhibitions of American art.

Sandhills Community College (Pinehurst, N.C.): $2.4-million bequest from Helene K. Bracken, of Pinehurst, N.C., who died in 2000 at age 88, and whose late husband was a physician, for the college’s nursing and health-science programs; and a $1.5-million bequest from Warren Steed, of Candor, N.C., who owned a nursery, and who died in 2000 at age 82, to support the school’s horticultural and landscape-gardening program.

St. Lawrence U. (Canton, N.Y.): $1-million from Edward and Karen Wachtmeister, who own White Hall Farm in Warrenton, Va., to help build and equip an environmental-science laboratory and purchase additional equipment for existing laboratories.

Seattle Public Schools: $1-million from Kirby and Ellery Cramer, of Kirkland, Wash., to the John H. Stanford Endowment Fund, which supports Seattle’s public school system.

Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Charlottesville, Va.): $1-million from Jeffrey C. Walker, of Wilton, Conn., a member of the foundation’s board and managing partner of J.P. Morgan Partners, a global private-equity fund in New York, to purchase, install, and maintain computers and software at Monticello, the home designed and built by Thomas Jefferson, which is now a museum.

U. of Colorado at Boulder: $1.5-million from John E. de Castro, founder of Nothing But Net, a holding company in Chicago, to endow a professorship in new media at the journalism school.

U. of Iowa Foundation (Iowa City): $1.5-million from Allen S. Henry, of Melbourne, Fla., an alumnus and the retired vice president of Uniphase Broadband Products, part of JDS Uniphase, in San Jose, Calif., to establish a professorship in engineering.

U. of Memphis: $3-million from Rudi Scheidt, a private investor and retired chairman of the Hohenberg Brothers Company, a cotton company in Cordova, Tenn., to establish a music school.

Wake Forest U. (Winston-Salem, N.C.): $4-million in stock from an anonymous donor to create the Heritage Scholarships, which will be awarded to up to 32 students each year who demonstrate financial need.

Westminster College (New Wilmington, Conn.): $1.2-million unrestricted bequest from John S. Witherspoon, a physician who died in 2000. The funds will help build a student center.