Bestselling author Robert James Waller Jr. has announced that he intends to bequeath parts of his estate to Indiana University/Bloomington, including copyrights to all of his literature, art, and music, which will go to the University Libraries after his death. Tom Herbert of the Indiana University Foundation told American Libraries the total value of the bequest was being withheld at the donor’s request, but it was “well above $1 million and not over 10.”
Other parts of the bequest will go to the School of Music to establish a Robert J. Waller Sr. and Robert J. Waller Jr. chair in jazz studies; to the Kelley School of Business to go toward construction of a Corporate and Graduate Center with a courtyard named for Waller; and to the Research and University Graduate School, which will receive the author’s ranch in Texas for preservation and research use.
Waller received his PhD from IU’s School of Business in 1968. “Some 30 years out, the old emotions are still there,” he told Indiana Alumni Magazine, “the sense of warmth and gratitude I felt all those years ago and still feel toward IU as an institution.”
Posted December 11, 2000.