Grateful Library User Gives Duke University
$20 Million
The willingness of a Duke University librarian decades ago to lend books by mail to a young Virginia farm boy even though he wasn't enrolled there has resulted in a $20-million gift to the university's business school.
Given by John Brooks Fuqua, the grateful patron who grew up to found a Fortune 500 conglomerate, the donation will expand the faculty and international business education program of the business school, which was renamed in his honor in 1980. His latest gift, announced April 25, raises Fuqua's total munificence to Duke to $37 million.
Fuqua, who never attended college, educated himself by reading history, business, and finance books he borrowed from Duke. "He was saying last night that he hadn't paid his library dues back then, but he probably covered it since," business school Dean Cabell Smith told the Associated Press.
Posted May 4, 1998.
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