
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995                   TAG: 9509080105
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

UNIVERSITY RECEIVES $35 MILLION BEQUEST

Claiborne Robins, a pharmaceutical executive, shelved library books while working his way through the University of Richmond on a scholarship. When he died this summer, he left $35 million to his alma mater, bringing to $160 million his family's contributions during the past 25 years.

The private college of 3,200 full-time students, founded by Baptists, had an endowment of $4 million when Robins began giving in 1969. His bequest, announced by the college this week, brings the endowment to more than $450 million.

Richmond's president, Richard Morrill, called Robins ``our second founder. ... He realized the faraway dream of many people, of transforming an institution.''

In 1992, a presidential debate was held in the Robins Center, the university's gymnasium, which was named for Robins.

The university's alumni magazine almost ran out of accolades, calling articles about him ``Generosity of Soul'' and ``The Magnificent Giver.''

His son, Claiborne Robins Jr., said college officials once discussed renaming the college Robins University. ``My dad did not in any way want to entertain that thought,'' he said Thursday in a telephone interview. ``The feeling was that it would make it more difficult to raise money from others.''

Last year Robins told the university's alumni magazine he had decided in 1969 that his contributions to universities and to civic and arts groups were being spread too thin. ``I settled on the University of Richmond because I felt it had the greatest potential,'' he said.

The elder Robins graduated from Richmond in 1931. He retired in 1989 as the chairman of the family business, A.H. Robins Inc., which he built to a pharmaceutical giant from a drugstore founded by his grandfather. The firm was sold in 1989 because of liability for injuries caused by the company's Dalkon shield, a birth-control device.

Robins was 84 when he died in July of pancreatic cancer. His son said he did not know about the bequest until he read the will.

by CNB