A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
John Mitchell left $50 million to endow need-based scholarships and to expand support for faculty and programs at this Gill, Mass., boarding and day school. Mitchell was a former president of Pfizer Global Manufacturing, where he led manufacturing operations for the pharmaceutical giant’s human health care, consumer health care, and animal-health products divisions.
Mitchell came from humble beginnings. He grew up in an unheated home in Harwich, Mass., with parents who struggled mightily to meet the family’s basic needs but who clearly saw their son’s academic potential couldn’t be fulfilled in the local public school. In 1952, he earned a scholarship to attend what was then called Mount Hermon School for Boys, where he excelled and graduated in 1956 as class valedictorian. After graduating from Yale in 1960, Mitchell started his career working at Procter & Gamble’s Tide soap factory on Staten Island. He later earned an MBA from New York University.
Mitchell served on Northfield’s Board of Trustees from 2010-2020 and as a trustee emeritus until his death in 2022 at 83. He gave a number of large donations to the school during his lifetime, including to support faculty housing projects, athletics facilities, the early-childhood center, and other campus projects.
Milton and Denice Johnson gave $30 million to launch the Johnson Academic Challenge, through which they will match gifts of $1.5 million to $3 million from other donors to establish 20 endowed professorships.
Milton Johnson, who attended Belmont on a scholarship, retired as chairman and CEO of HCA Healthcare in 2018. He joined the Nashville-based health system giant in 1982. Denice Johnson is a former teacher.
Lodi Community Foundation
San Francisco businesswoman Sheila Wishek left $30 million to help people and organizations in her hometown. Foundation officials said in a news release that they are in the process of developing how best to distribute and make use of Wishek’s bequest.
“She had told us that the foundation would receive a contribution, but this is beyond any of our expectations,” said John Ledbetter, the foundation’s chairman. “Her gift to the foundation is a total game-changer, not just for the foundation itself, but for the entire community.”
Wishek grew up in Lodi, Calif., in the 1940s and early 1950s. While her father, Carl Wishek Sr., worked as a cashier at Lodi’s Farmers and Merchants Bank, he and his family were also majority shareholders of that bank, and Sheila Wishek inherited some of that wealth. She attended Dominican College and then the University of California at Berkeley and worked at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spain, in the 1960s. She settled in San Francisco and owned and ran Russian Hill Antiques, an antiques store, from 1985 to 2007, the year she retired. She died last year at 88.
Conservancy of Southwest Florida
John and Carol Walter gave $25 million through their John & Carol Walter Family Foundation to build a new visitor center, expand the conservancy’s public education programs for children and adults, and support collaborative efforts with local schools, artists, and other organizations. The gift will also be used to create new interactive exhibits and develop new spaces where visitors can connect with nature.
John Walter is a retired corporate executive. He worked for R.R. Donnelley & Sons, an international commercial printing company in Chicago, for more than two decades, serving as president and CEO from 1989 to 1996. He later served briefly as president and chief operating officer of AT&T.
University of Mississippi Medical Center
John and Sandy Black pledged $25 million to help construct a building to house a new cancer treatment center and research institute. The couple are also helping the medical center, as honors chairs of the organization’s capital campaign, raise money for the new facility.
John Black is a real estate investor. He founded HCM, a company that operated nursing homes and assisted living facilities, and in 1981 sold the business to Beverly Enterprise, which later became North American Senior Care. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the university in 1961 and a master’s degree in accountancy in 1962, and started his career as an accountant with Peat Marwick, an accounting and consulting firm in Jackson, Miss., which later became KPMG International. Sandy Black also attended the university.
Arlene Andrews McLean pledged $4 million to support student research programs and to renovate and pay for upgrades for the college’s science labs. The college plans to name a floor in its chemistry building, Pfahler Hall, after McLean later this year.
McLean is a scientist who helped lead Centocor, a biotechnology company that was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 1999. She also worked as a statistician and research analyst for the pharmaceutical giant Merck, and later as a consultant for start-up companies. She entered Ursinus at 16 and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the university. She went on to earn a master’s degree from Villanova University and a PhD at Thomas Jefferson University.
Ukrainian Catholic University Foundation
Adrian and Chrystia Slywotzky gave $2.5 million to establish the Metropolitan Gudziak Endowed Faculty Fund, which will help officials at Ukrainian Catholic University, in Lviv, Ukraine, hire more faculty. The couple plan to match donations up to $1 million from other donors for the fund until the end of the year.
The fund is named for Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak, an American priest and the Metropolitan-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, who serves as president of the university. The foundation is the American fundraising arm of the Ukrainian university and is headquartered in Chicago.
Adrian Slywotzky is a management expert and partner at Oliver Wyman, a New York consulting firm, and the author of several business books. He serves on the advisory council of the university’s Lviv Business School. Chrystia Slywotzky is a radiologist.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
