Mass. General Lands $100 Million for New Cancer Center

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Massachusetts General Hospital

Herb Chambers gave $100 million to back construction of a cancer-care center. The Herb Chambers Tower is scheduled to open in 2027 and will house the hospital’s new Center for Urgent Cancer Care, which will provide specialized care and services for cancer patients and their families. The new building will include an 8,000-square-foot rooftop garden to which patients will have access.

Chambers founded the Herb Chambers Companies in 1985. The Somerville, Mass., business owns 60 automobile dealerships throughout New England. He grew up in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood in Boston, and quit high school at 17 to join the U.S. Navy. He worked as an aviation electrician serving aboard the USS Lake Champlain, an aircraft carrier that played an important role during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

He left the military when he was 22 and returned to the Boston area, where he found work repairing copy machines. Chambers soon founded A-Copy America, a copier distribution company that he grew over time and sold to Alco Standard Corporation in 1983 for an estimated $80 million.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association

Helen Zell gave $50 million through the Zell Family Foundation to strengthen the orchestra’s finances, add to its endowment, shore up funding for musician and staff retirement benefits — and support the orchestra’s domestic and international tours, its artistic programming, and its marketing and promotional efforts.

Zell is a longtime board member of the organization and is currently serving as chairwoman of the orchestra’s fundraising campaign. She is the widow of Sam Zell, who co-founded Equity Group Investments, an investment firm in Chicago, and died last year. The couple have given extensively to higher education, Jewish groups, health-care and human services groups, and arts and culture organizations.

The Zells donated $17 million to the orchestra in 2014 for endowment and general operating support, and the desire to continue backing the nonprofit’s operations inspired Helen Zell’s latest gift. “As an avid supporter of the arts, I understand the importance of philanthropy in filling the gap between earned revenue and operating expenses,” she said in a news release.

University of Pennsylvania

William Levy left more than $42 million to support the William J. Levy Endowed Scholarship Fund, which he established 20 years ago to support undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences who have proven that they are interested in contributing to the betterment of society. The scholarship will support 40 students annually.

Levy grew up in Pittsburgh, where his family owned the Warren Grocery Company chain of stores. He graduated from the university’s Wharton School in 1957 and then served in the U.S. Navy for two years. He worked for his father briefly and then returned to the university to attend the Carey Law School, graduating in 1964. He worked in the Philadelphia Public Defenders office and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington and then founded Warren-Potomac, an investment firm in New York. Levy died last year at 88.

American Library Association

James Lewis pledged $25 million to support scholarships for students working toward master’s degrees in library and information science at ALA-accredited library schools. Lewis is a financial and wealth advisor who leads the Lewis Group in the Washington office of the investment-management giant Merrill Lynch.

He is a longtime library volunteer. He has served as on the Board of Visitors at the library of his alma mater, Wake Forest University, and spent 10 years on the Board of Trustees of the District of Columbia Public Library. He recalled in a news release vivid childhood memories of regular visits to his then-local library in New Bern, N.C., and added that he considers today’s libraries among the country’s “most democratic institutions.”

“Anyone can walk in and benefit not only from the books but from the resources and full offerings libraries provide to their communities, including computers, technology training and assistance, career building, homework help, and literacies of all kinds,” Lewis said. “Libraries are one of our last community spaces where people can go without economic barrier to entry and be welcome.”   

Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital

Cheryl Ramberg-Ford and her husband, Allyn Ford, gave $16 million to establish the Ramberg Ford Pediatric Neuromuscular Disorders Center, a clinic that will provide multidisciplinary care for children with pediatric neuromuscular disorders and support clinical research for such disorders.

The couple made the donation to honor Ramberg-Ford’s late brother, Douglas Ramberg, who died in 1965 from complications of muscular dystrophy, the most common neuromuscular disorder.

Allyn Ford is a retired president, CEO, and chairman of Roseburg Forest Products, a wood products company in Springfield, Ore. that his family founded in 1936. He served as chairman of Umpqua Bank, in Portland, Ore., from 1999 to 2012.

Cornell University

C. Kenneth Grailer left $11.5 million to expand the Center for Hospitality Research in the Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration. The money will also be used to renovate the Grailer Food Labs, and support scholarships for students in the school’s Master of Management in Hospitality program.

Grailer graduated from Cornell in 1953 and worked as an investment consultant in Santa Monica, Calif. He died in March at 100.

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