Largest Gift in History of UM
Washington Foundation Gives $10 Million to the University of Montana
By Robert Struckman, 5-02-08
Billionaire couple Dennis and Phyllis Washington announced the largest gift in the 115-year history of the University of Montana at the campus Friday: $10 million for a new education building.
Education is important, Phyllis said. “We can’t afford to let it fall off the chart.” She delivered her comments at a glass podium before a 40-foot sign with a rendering of the structure. Phyllis graduated with a degree in education from UM and supported her family for the first years of her husband’s construction business. He eventually took one company public and owns others, including Washington Corp., a Missoula-based holding company that owns the copper mine at Butte, a railroad and shipping interests, as well as other businesses. Forbes estimated the Washington net worth at $2.5 billion.
UM President George Dennison lavished praise on the couple and on the building’s designers, OZ Architects, for its environmentally friendly aspects. The building, promotional materials say, will be the first of its kind, replete with all the latest technological gadgetry for distance-learning, math and science.
Dennison called the Washingtons “articulate champions” of education and said the new building would “change the nature and future of education” in this geographically vast state that is “unique and yet so challenging.”
To the left of the stage, on the grass, a few children from the Learning and Belonging Preschool at UM wore shiny plastic hats and played in a big pile of sand from a Washington Foundation truck. Susan Harper-Whalen, of the early childhood education department, said the inclusion of the preschool-age children at the periphery of the ceremony and in the new building’s plans eased her mind of worries that the low-profile program might be eliminated, she said.
“It’s such a thrill. Pre-K really is a part, it’s integral,” Harper-Whalen said.
As much as a groundbreaking, the event provided a rare public glimpse of Dennis and Phyllis themselves. After his introduction by local lawyer Milt Datsopoulos, Dennis said, “Milt and I go way, way back to when I was in my early 20s and had a vision of myself as a big equipment operator.”
His favorite activity, Dennis joked, was to “pursue homecoming queens, and fortunately I got the best.” Dennis and Phyllis have been married for 43 years. “It hasn’t always been good times…, but we love each other, more than most,” he said.
His philosophy is that “when you do good, you do good for others,” he added. He believes in the importance of education, he said but when Phyllis talks about it, “I get bored, because I’m not really good at it. I’m not well-educated myself.”
Dennis, who has a high school diploma, attended a dozen schools in as many years as a child.
It was Milt who introduced Dennis to Phyllis. Milt and Dennis had been at a bar in downtown Missoula called the Flame Lounge. A redhead walked in, and Dennis asked Milt who she was. He answered that she was the homecoming queen. “Then the horns went up,” Dennis said. Then Dennis got a little outrageous. He said Phyllis still kept a notebook of his from that time, in which he had written a description of her: “skinny legs, big boobs.”
The audience of about 340 hollered and laughed.
Phyllis, meanwhile, ducked her head and then learned into the microphone and said, “This is making a whole different image here.” She got the ceremony back on track and finished by emphasizing the importance, at the new school, of teaching teachers. Then she asked the crowd to be generous with their own time, money and energy.
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Comments
So where are you in THIS billionaire club, Tim and Edra? Don't you have the money to join? Not exclusive enough for you, not sexy enough, this rather plain version of philanthropy?
:::scratching head::::
Oh, I get it. It was about a bunch of rich, connected, corrupted folk gaffawing together beneath a noonday sun!