Couple Gives $34-Million to 2 Minnesota Foundations; Other Recent Donations

Minnesotans Eugene and Mary Frey have given a combined $34-million to two community foundations in St. Paul.

The Saint Paul Foundation has received $25-million, and the Catholic Community Foundation of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis has received $9-million. Both gifts established donor-advised funds that will support education, human services, and efforts to improve the lives of disabled people.

The Freys and their three children were sole owners of the Waldorf Corporation, which operated paperboard-recycling mills, until they sold the business in January to the Rock-Tenn Company.

* Columbia University in New York has received $26-million from the Shanghai-born financier Z. Y. Fu to endow its engineering school.

Renamed the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the school will use income from the fund to augment programs in computer science, applied mathematics, and biomedical and electrical engineering.

Mr. Fu founded the Tokyo-based Sansiao Trading Corporation in 1951. He endowed a professorship at the engineering school in 1990 and, since 1993, has provided scholarships to 24 students each year who are of Chinese ancestry.

* The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired a collection of paintings and works on paper valued at more than $25-million from Bernard Lewin, the retired owner of a furniture-store chain, and his wife, Edith.

The Lewins donated more than 1,800 works by such 20th-century Mexican masters as Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and Rufino Tamayo.

Mr. Lewin, who had exhibited art works for sale in his furniture stores, currently owns B. Lewin Galleries in Palm Springs, Cal.

The Lewins will receive an annuity from the museum based on an undisclosed percentage of the total market value of the collection.

* The Medical College of Georgia in Augusta has sold for $14-million three radio stations that had been given to it by George Weiss of Augusta.

Mr. Weiss had donated his broadcasting company, which ran WBBQ-FM/AM and WZNY-FM, to the college on June 24. Mr. Weiss also gave a shopping center that, the college estimates, will produce about $200,000 annually in rent. All gifts were for unrestricted use.

The Chicago-based company Cumulus Broadcasting bought the radio stations September 3. The college expects the Federal Communications Commission to approve the sale within 90 days.

Other recent gifts:

Appalachian State U. (N.C.): $1,500,000 from Frank Petersilie of Boone, N.C., who owns a real-estate-management company, and his wife, Beth, for a new visual-arts center. The university must either purchase land for the center or acquire an existing building within the next two years in order to receive the gift.

Gannon U. (Pa.): $1,500,000 from William M. Schuster of Erie, Pa., retired vice-president of Warren Radio Company, to endow arts programs and scholarships.

Lawrence U. (Wis.): $1,000,000 bequest from the estate of Claire Langstadt Gehin of Appleton, Wis., retired president of Langstadt Electric Supply Company, for scholarships.

Portland State U. (Ore.): $1,000,000 from Keren Brown Wilson of Clackamas, Ore., president of Assisted Living Concepts, and her husband, Michael R. DeShane, president of Concepts in Community Living, for the Urban Center, a planned seven-story building that will house the College of Urban and Public Affairs and other programs.

Presbyterian College (S.C.): $1,000,000 bequest from the estate of Bennett A. Brown of Atlanta and Pawley’s Island, S.C., retired chairman of NationsBank, for scholarships.

Southern Virginia College: $2,100,000 from an anonymous family in Utah to complete the college’s transition from a two-year woman’s institution to a four-year coeducational institution.

State U. of West Georgia: $1,500,000 from Roy Richards, Jr., of Carrollton, Ga., chairman of the Southwire Company, for endowment and for the College of Business.

U. of Alabama in Huntsville: $1,500,000 from an anonymous donor to create a biotechnology laboratory.

U. of California at Los Angeles: $5,000,000 from Bob Wilson of Los Angeles, president of Duckett-Wilson Development Company, and his wife, Marion, to benefit the School of Dentistry, the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, the College of Letters and Science, and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies; and a $1,000,000 bequest from the estate of George Burns of Beverly Hills, Cal., the entertainer, for scholarships for students studying comedic acting, writing, producing, and directing, and for a dean’s discretionary fund at the School of Theater, Film and Television.

U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: $7,200,000 from Sheldon Drobny of Highland Park, Ill., managing director of the Paradigm Group, an investment and financial-consulting organization, his wife, Anita, and his partners at Paradigm, to create a Jewish-studies program at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and to endow the Jewish-studies program at the Chicago campus; farmland valued at $3,000,000 from Melissa Noel of Champaign, Ill., whose late husband, Dorrell, owned and managed real estate, to establish a chair in agriculture; and $3,000,000 from Leonard C. Hoeft of Minneapolis, retired chairman of Ziegler Inc., a construction-equipment distributor, and his wife, Mary Lou, to establish chairs in the College of Commerce and Business Administration and in the College of Engineering.

U. of Scranton (Pa.): Charitable remainder trust valued at $1,000,000 from William Scranton of Dalton, Pa., former governor of Pennsylvania and former ambassador to the United Nations, and his wife, Mary, for the capital campaign.

U. of Southern California: Charitable remainder trust valued at $1,260,000 from Ralph W. Bleak of Los Angeles, a retired dentist, and his wife, Jean, for a professorship in restorative dentistry.

U. of Texas at Austin: $5,000,000 over five years from J. Virgil Waggoner of Houston, an investor and former president of Sterling Chemicals, and his wife, June, for research on the genetic causes of alcoholism.