A Couple Who Made Their Fortune on Wall Street Give to the Heartland

When John Pappajohn meets potential business partners on Wall Street, he’s always proud to be from Iowa.

“It’s got a reputation as a place with a great work ethic and integrity,” says the venture capitalist, who is now 81. “The people here are special.”

So it’s natural that the state has been the focus of Mr. Pappajohn’s philanthropy and that of his wife, Mary. The couple, who rank No. 23 on The Chronicle’s list of America’s 50 most-generous donors, pledged $26.4-million to create a biomedical institute at his alma mater, the University of Iowa.

The Pappajohns also donated eight works of art last year valued at $13-million to help the Des Moines Art Center transform a downtown piece of land into a sculpture park. The works, along with 16 others the couple gave in 2008, include a Deborah Butterfield sculpture of a horse commissioned for the site and pieces by Willem de Kooning, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra.

The couple also made significant contributions to the Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship at Iowa State University, in Ames; the National Gallery of Art, in Washington; the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis; and other groups.

The Pappajohns first got to talking about their latest gift to the University of Iowa three years ago. Jean Robillard, the university’s vice president for medical affairs, had a grand vision for a new center, one that would bring faculty members from different academic disciplines together to generate high-risk, high-reward scientific discoveries.

To Mr. Pappajohn, whose business focuses on medical inventions, it sounded like a great idea. A trustee of the University of Iowa Foundation since 1989, he was also excited about the potential economic impact on Iowa.

Dr. Robillard foresees the gift facilitating collaboration among not just scientists but also sociologists and legal experts, who can work together on the center’s future discoveries.

“This will allow us to continue to recruit the best people from around the world, to develop a new generation of people who will learn that science is a collective activity,” he says.

An Early Start

Mr. Pappajohn says he has been so involved in supporting the university and other institutions in part because he got an early start. He gave his first donation, $10, to the university a few years after he graduated.

“You’ve got to get these kids started right away,” he says.

His time at the University of Iowa, he says, “opened my eyes.” He grew up in a small town in Iowa, where his family settled after it emigrated from Greece when he was a baby.

His father opened a corner grocery store. Mr. Pappajohn says he began to work there when he was 7 or 8 years old, “from 6 in the morning, 365 days a year.”

“That was probably the best work experience I had anywhere along the way,” he says. “There was no affluence in my neighborhood, but there were nice people.”

In college, Mr. Pappajohn held a job at a delicatessen to pay the bills and graduated with $2,000 and no debt. Then he went into the insurance business. A few years later, he went out on his own. The company eventually went public, in what was the first of about 50 public offerings Mr. Pappajohn would be involved in.

Avid Collectors

As their wealth grew, the Pappajohns built a vast collection of modern and contemporary art. They got their first piece, a print, a month after their marriage. They eventually ran out of room in their house. Mr. Pappajohn calls art collecting “like having a minor.”

Both Pappajohns have served on the boards of many art institutions, including the Des Moines Art Center. They got the idea for the sculpture park one day while driving through the city’s downtown. “Des Moines had recently bought a lot of buildings and had them razed, and I looked over and said to my wife, ‘That’s where our sculpture belongs,’” says Mr. Pappajohn. “She looked over and said, ‘I think you’re right.’”

Mr. Pappajohn called a city official and the plan grew. The city, local businesses, and foundations gave $6.5-million to transform the space.

In the future, though, the couple do not plan to play an active role in overseeing the park. Mr. Pappajohn describes his approach to giving as quite unlike his style in business, which he says is “very hands on.”

With the university gift, he says, “it will not be that way at all. It’s their decision. They’re going to run it, not me.”