<p>Alumna Gives $128 Million to High School
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<p>By SAM DILLON
Published: September 19, 2007
It probably would never have happened if Harvard University had not rejected Warren E. Buffett’s business school application in 1950. But a string of events originating with Mr. Buffett’s disappointment led yesterday to a Quaker high school’s receiving a gift that dwarfs some college endowments: $128 million. </p>
<p>Officials at George School, a prep school in Bucks County, Pa., were reeling from the contribution, believed to be one of the largest ever to a secondary school. “All I could say was things like, ‘Wow, this is overwhelming,’ ” said Anne Storch, the school’s chief fund-raiser.</p>
<p>It all began when Mr. Buffett, long before he became the celebrated investor, was rejected by Harvard and attended Columbia instead. A business professor there, David L. Dodd, was so impressed that after Mr. Buffett returned home to Nebraska and formed an investment partnership, Professor Dodd invested some of his own money for himself and his daughter. </p>
<p>Mr. Buffett soon acquired a then-obscure textile company named Berkshire Hathaway, and over the years made his professor and many other early investors rich.</p>
<p>Professor Dodd’s daughter, Barbara Dodd Anderson, an alumna of the high school, yesterday used much of the fortune from that original investment to endow George School, a private, 500-student institution set on a leafy 240-acre campus in Newtown, Pa.</p>
<p>“It was hard for me at first, because it seems like a ghastly amount of money, but it’s going for a worthy cause,” said Ms. Anderson, who lives in Fresno, Calif., where she was once a kindergarten teacher.</p>
<p>“I’m 75 years old, I have Alzheimer’s, and I’m probably not going to be around a lot longer,” Ms. Anderson said. “So I might as well see the money do some good.” </p>
<p>Ms. Anderson said that Mr. Buffett’s own breathtaking donation, the $37 billion he gave to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year to improve health and education across the United States and in poor nations, inspired her to make her donation.</p>
<p>In an interview, Mr. Buffett said Professor Dodd had turned his life around in 1950, when he graduated from the University of Nebraska and was applying to business school. Harvard rejected his application, and that August, well after Columbia’s application deadline, Mr. Buffett wrote to Professor Dodd, whom he admired as the author of a respected financial text. </p>
<p>“Dear Professor Dodd, I thought you were dead, but now that I know that you’re alive, I’d like to come study with you,” Mr. Buffett said he wrote in his letter.</p>
<p>“And he admitted me to Columbia!” Mr. Buffett said. “I would not be who I am today without David Dodd. If in response to my letter he’d said, ‘Sorry, its too late,’ I’d never be where I am.”</p>
<p>“Harvard did me a big favor by turning me down,” he said. “But I haven’t made any contributions to them in thanks for that.” </p>
<p>Mr. Buffett said Ms. Anderson’s gift was one of several vast philanthropic contributions made recently by largely unknown and uncelebrated people who have profited immensely by the appreciation of the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment and insurance holding company. </p>
<p>Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, for instance, received roughly $200 million in the late 1990s from Donald and Mildred Othmer, friends of Mr. Buffett. </p>
<p>“One fellow who talked to me recently said he had done something with $1 billion,” Mr. Buffett said. “A lot of people get older and they’re not really sure what to do with their money if they’ve got a lot of it. But I’m sure Barbara was always going to give it to something worthwhile.”</p>
<p>Ms. Anderson, born in June 1932, grew up in New York City. Her father enrolled her at George School in 1946, and she graduated four years later. She attended St. Lawrence University and earned an M.A. from Columbia Teachers College before marrying and settling in Fresno. </p>
<p>In the interview, Ms. Anderson said George School had provided her with fine instruction, encouragement for her work ethic and a family away from home during years when her mother was sick. She has two grown children.</p>
<p>Ms. Storch of the George School said, “We did a lot of research, and as far as we know this is the largest donation ever to an existing independent school.” </p>
<p>The second-largest single donation to a private secondary school Ms. Storch was able to document, she said, was a 1993 gift of $100 million to Peddie School in Hightstown, N.J., by the publisher Walter Annenberg.</p>
<p>Comparing donations is complicated by factors like the length of time over which they are paid out. Ms. Anderson’s is to be paid over 20 years from a charitable trust, at a rate of $5 million per year for 15 years and $10.7 million per year for the last five, for a total of $128.5 million, said Ed Huff, Ms. Anderson’s accountant.</p>
<p>Still, even colleges dream of this kind of bequest, which dwarfs the endowments of that of Sarah Lawrence, for example, which the College Board lists at $66 million. </p>
<p>George School’s endowment was $77 million before Ms. Anderson’s gift, and parts of the gift will be used to build faculty housing, raise faculty salaries and finance scholarships, Ms. Storch said. </p>
<p>“This would be one of the largest donations to any secondary school,” said Robert F. Sharpe, a fund-raising consultant in Memphis.</p>
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