Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511060070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The estate of Maryland journalist Virginia Webb, who died last month, gave the school $1.8 million, and the sister of late children's author Margaret Wise Brown pledged a percent of royalties from Brown's books, valued at $1 million.
Webb, a member of the Hollins class of 1930, worked for The Daily Banner in Cambridge, Md., for a decade when it was owned by her family. She later helped with a book on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia. She died Oct. 1 in Cambridge at age 86.
Hers is the largest estate gift from an alumna in the college's history.
Brown, who was two years behind Webb in school, was the author of such children's classics as "Goodnight Moon" and "The Runaway Bunny." Her name already plays a prominent role at Hollins. A collection of her personal papers, letters and manuscripts complement the graduate program in children's literature, established in 1992.
The approximately $1 million new donation from Brown's sister, Roberta Rauch of Jamaica, Vt., will be used to support the Margaret Wise Brown Professorship in English, the college said.
Brown died in 1952, and some of her more than 140 books were published posthumously. "Goodnight Moon" has sold more than 4 million copies.
Hollins President Maggie O'Brien, who once taught at the same college as Wise's sister, Middlebury College in Vermont, said Saturday that a new Hollins library will allow the school to properly display Wise's works.
As part of Saturday's events, O'Brien showed off a computer-generated photo of the $9.8 million facility planned for a site that is now the parking lot for the school's duPont Chapel. More than $5.7 million has been raised toward the construction and a $1 million endowment.
Part of the impetus for the college's current campaign came from a $1.5 million challenge by The Kenan Charitable Trust of Chapel Hill, N.C. The trust, represented by Tom Kenan, pledged that amount if the college could raise $1 million a year for three years in a row. The amount was raised eight months before the deadline.
As of this weekend, Hollins has pledges of $32,316,309, a spokeswoman said.
Hollins, founded in 1842 as the state's first chartered women's college, chose Saturday to showcase its plans because it was the anniversary of a flood that devastated the Roanoke Valley. The Flood of 1985 ruined 40,000 library books and caused $4 million in damage at the college.
by CNB