Washington National Cathedral Lands $22 Million From 2 Families (Gifts Roundup)
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
June 17, 2019 | Read Time: 3 minutes
A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Washington National Cathedral
Virginia Cretella Mars and her four daughters gave $17 million, and Andrew and Heather Florance gave $5 million to restore a 90-year-old building that will house the Virginia Mae Center, part of the Cathedral College of Faith and Culture, a new programmatic arm of the Cathedral.
Mars, who was formerly married to the late Forrest Mars Jr., an heir to the Mars candy fortune, is the secretary of the Cathedral’s governing board. The center will be named for her. (Mae is her middle name.)
Andrew Florence founded the CoStar Group, a company that provides information and marketing services to commercial real estate firms. He is the chairman of the Cathedral’s Board of Trustees.
Park Nicollet Foundation
Ken Melrose donated $18.7 million to expand eating disorder care and treatment at Park Nicollet Health Services’ Melrose Center, a healthcare center that treats patients with eating disorders.
The money will establish the Kendrick B. Melrose Leadership and Excellence Endowment Fund and back the expansion of the Melrose Center’s main campus in St. Louis and its satellite locations.
Melrose retired as chief executive and chairman of Toro Company, a manufacturer of turf, irrigation, and other equipment, in 2005 and 2006 respectively. He is the author of the book Making the Grass Greener on Your Side: A CEO’s Journey to Leading by Serving.
He gave a large donation to establish Melrose Center 10 years ago and has served on the Boards of Directors for Park Nicollet Health Services and HealthPartners.
Maine Medical Center
Paul and Giselaine Coulombe and their daughter, Michelle Coulombe-Hagerty, pledged $7.5 million to expand and modernize the medical center. Sisters Linda and Diana Bean committed $3 million for that purpose.
Paul Coulombe is the retired head of his family’s White Rock Distilleries, in Lewiston, Me., and a real-estate developer. Linda Bean owns Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine, a group of shops, restaurants, and rentals in Freeport, Me.
Dartmouth College
Richard Reiss Jr. gave $10 million to help expand Dartmouth Libraries’ current programs and create new ones to meet the needs of today’s students, researchers, and others.
Reiss founded Georgica Advisors, an investment management firm. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1966 and has served on the college’s President’s Leadership Council and its Rockefeller Center Board of Visitors.
University of California at Los Angeles
Roy and Carol Doumani donated nearly $5.3 million to create the Doumani Research Innovation Fund, which will support the work of faculty affiliated with the Broad Stem Cell Research Center and the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Roy Doumani, who died in March, was a financier and a professor at the university’s David Geffen School of Medicine. He founded a number of Los Angeles companies, including First Los Angeles Bank; Agensys, a biotechnology firm; and Kite Pharma, which he sold in 2017 for $11.9 billion.
he served as executive director of the Business of Science Center at UCLA and helped found the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. An alumnus, he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1957.
Youngstown State University
Charles Darling left $2.2 million to establish the Charles Darling Distinguished Faculty Chair in American Social History, a full professorship in the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
Darling was a retired professor of history at the university and the longtime host of the Folk Festival radio program on WYSU-FM. A 1953 graduate of the university, he joined its history department in 1958 and taught classes in American economic, social, and cultural history; American folk music; and the Vietnam War. He retired from YSU in 1995 and died last summer at 86.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
Correction: A previous version of this article said that the Virginia Mae Center at the Washington National Cathedral was named after Virginia Cretella Mars using her maiden name. Mae is her middle name.
