New Money

From the success of the biggest fund-raising drive in the history of American undergraduate education (at Harvard) to an unexpected $1,000,000 from a retired cash register salesman (for St. Louis' Washington University), the ways in which U.S. universities find new funds made news last week. Among the diverse donors:

P: New York Yachtsman Harold S. Vanderbilt gave $2,500,000 to the Program for Harvard College, just in time to enable the monumental three-year campaign to top its goal with total pledges of $82,697,470, plus a $5,000,000 dividend of interest and appreciation already earned by Program money in the bank. Explained onetime Harvardman ('07) Vanderbilt: "This drive has acquired an almost romantic appeal for the many who love Harvard."

P: McDonnell Aircraft Corp. in St. Louis, after totting up the cost of parties, souvenirs and advertising planned to celebrate its 20th anniversary, decided to give the $300,000 instead to home-town Saint Louis and Washington universities, and President James S. McDonnell's alma mater, Princeton. McDonnell makes mostly military jets, also has a contract for the space capsule to carry the first U.S. astronaut aloft.

P: The Falcon Foundation, a group of air-minded men and present and former Air Force officials, headed by Major General (ret.) Robert J. Smith, chairman of Dallas' Federal Reserve Bank, is financing 20 boys in three preparatory schools this year, all Air Force Academy applicants turned down initially only because of inadequate preparation. Eight current academy cadets rose through the Falcon Foundation's prep program last year.

P: Prague-born, retired Cash Register Salesman Karl D. Umrath, 76, who migrated to the U.S. in 1902 and started as a $6-a-week floor sweeper, was disclosed as the anonymous donor of $1,000,000 to Washington University a year ago, when his wife last week gave the school another $200,000. The Umraths, still living in the modest brick house in St. Louis in which they were married 55 years ago, seemed unlikely bets for anybody's fund-raising list. But Umrath started investing when he arrived in the U.S., during the Depression picked up blue-chip stocks at bargain-basement prices, explained last week that he was giving his fortune to education rather than to charities because "I am my brother's keeper, and the best way to keep one's brother is to make him self-sufficient."

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