Education: Halfway Giver

An angel descended last year on unsuspecting Davidson College (enrollment: 920) near Charlotte, N.C. He was a lively, white-mustached angel with a resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt—and $400,000 under his wing. The cash proved that he was very much of this world, and so did his terms: the Presbyterian men's school could have the money for a sorely needed science building—if it raised another $700,000. It did. Last week, as workmen hauled shiny lab equipment into the new building, Manhattan Millionaire Charles Anderson Dana, back in his Park Avenue aerie, busily unrolled blueprints from other colleges. The plans had to be sound, the terms unwavering: "I'll give half if you give half."

At 78, Charles Dana has reached the age when rich Americans take up the art of giving away money. But not for him the faceless foundation, or the fund raiser with a checklist of millionaires. Dana picks his own targets, pounces on them with tough-minded charity. For the past three years, he has personally "traipsed myself up and down the South," scouting the needs and virtues of a dozen small, obscure colleges. So far, he has seeded seven campuses with more than $2,700,000.

Why Wait to Die? Dana gets as much fun out of giving as he did out of getting. He was to both manners born, in New York City's fashionable Gramercy Park area of the 1880s. His wealthy banker father financed Pacific whaling fleets, invested in coal mines; his cousin was the New York Sun's famed editor-owner. Young Dana was three years out of Columbia law when he became an assistant prosecutor (under William Travers Jerome) in the sensational 1907 trial of Harry Thaw for the murder of Architect Stanford White. It led him into the state legislature as a three-term Republican. A strenuous-life aristocrat in the T.R. style, Lawyer Dana was an off-hours National Guard cavalryman, punched cattle in Mexico summers to stay in shape. At 36 he reorganized New Jersey's Spicer Manufacturing Co., maker of the first successful universal joint for autos. By the time Spicer was renamed Dana Corp. in 1946, it was a Toledo-based complex of five thriving auto-parts companies. Net sales last year: $168.5 million.

"I found myself with all this money," recalls Board Chairman Dana. "If you wait until you're dead, it often doesn't get used the way you want it to." Dana gave generously to hospitals; then (in 1956) he discovered small colleges. They seemed to him especially deserving: "At a big university, there's no development of natural resources through companionship. I think students in the small college understand life more. Life at a small college broadens them, and they study harder."

When Florida's Stetson University matched his $250,000 for a law-school library, Dana was in business. Since, he has given $200,000 to Georgia's Berry College toward a new dormitory, $150,000 to North Carolina's Guilford College for its extension school, $350,000 to Connecticut's University of Bridgeport toward a science building. His object is to meet each school's crying need—halfway.

"I'll Do It If You Will." Dana helps those who help themselves, and he loves luring a whole community into backing its local college. (If he judges that a town can raise two-thirds of the money, he shrewdly limits himself to one-third.)