With Lorry Lokey as the catalytic philanthropist, other Berkshire constituents have become generous benefactors, too. Another extraordinary example concerns the program begun by FlightSafety founder, the late Al Ueltshci. Ending blindness was his quest. He created a flying eye hospital called ORBIS International to provide sight-saving surgery and training for surgeons worldwide. With his son James, he sought to eradicate cataract blindness in the developing world. To do this, he adapted the knowledge he gained at FlightSafety to create simulation devices to train eye surgeons to be able to serve local communities.
A third exemplar of philanthropy’s spirit was Jeffrey Comment, long-time chief executive of Helzberg Diamonds. For many years at Christmas, Comment visited numerous children’s hospitals across the U.S. dressed as Santa Claus. His purpose was to share some joy with seriously ill children. In his tear-jerking memoir about this outreach, Comment said that his inspiration was the marvelous sense of innocent hope he saw in these children.13
Customers, employees, and other constituents chip in to philanthropic efforts at some Berkshire subsidiaries. The thousands of franchisees of Dairy Queen, for example, support the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals.14 Since 1984, they have generated more than $100 million, making Dairy Queen among the small group of corporations in its “Founders Circle.”15 Funds are drawn from customers’ spare change, events at the shops, and sales of “Miracle Balloons.” Since 1986, employees of McLane have raised more than $65 million for CMN Hospitals, putting it in an elite group of corporations called “Partners” of the effort.16
The philanthropic interests of Berkshire subsidiary executives are as varied as the group is diverse. John Justin Jr. was passionate about western U.S. heritage and the rodeo. In 1988, he contributed $3.4 million to help build the $17.4 million Will Rogers Equestrian Center in Fort Worth, Texas.17 Justin Jr. supported the creation of a sports medicine program for the National Finals Rodeo. One component is the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund. It gives financial aid to injured rodeo performers and their families.18
Fellow Texan, Drayton McLane Jr., third-generation manager of his family’s grocery wholesaler and distributor, is a generous benefactor of Baylor University.19 Donations include forty-eight cast bronze bells hoisted in the tower of the school’s central administrative building.
Utah-based Bill Child, who built RC Willey with his family, was drawn to donate millions to American Indian Services and funding scholarships for Native Americans. Like McLane and other Berkshire builders, Child also supported higher education, making large gifts to the University of Utah, as well Brigham Young, Dixie State, and Weber State Universities. In 2003, the Childs gave $3 million to support the William H. and Patricia W. Child Emergency Center at the University of Utah Hospital.
New Englander Harold Alfond, founder of Dexter, contributed much of his $3 billion in net worth to support colleges, scholarships, and community centers in Maine and Massachusetts. Gifts funded construction projects at Boston College, the University of Maine, and the University of Massachusetts, often requiring that facilities be shared with surrounding communities.20
Philanthropy means giving in both money and time. Ed Bridge, for one, is a board member and past chairman of Jewelers for Children, an industry non-profit formed in 1999. Through 2013, it raised more than $43 million for child victims of catastrophic illness, abuse, and neglect.21 For another, Stan Lipsey, long-time head of the Buffalo News, raised $14 million to restore Buffalo’s 1907 Darwin Martin House complex, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
In the arts, Shirley and Barnett Helzberg Jr. donated millions to Kansas City’s Kaufman Center for the Performing Arts, naming Helzberg Hall there, as well as to the Kansas City Zoo. Jim Clayton, a Tennessee native and art lover, donated $5 million to the Knoxville Museum of Art for a new building, then the largest gift to the arts in the state’s history. Clayton also donated $1 million to build a birthing center at the hospital where his children were born.22
The Pritzker family is exceptional for both its wealth and its philanthropy. A dozen family members have net worth exceeding $1 billion, ranking high on the Forbes 400 list; members have endowed numerous academies, centers, galleries, institutes, prizes, and schools in their native Chicago to as far away as Cambodia. Among these are galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago, the medical school of the University of Chicago, a legal research program at Northwestern University, and an engineering center within the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Charlie Munger has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to a variety of causes, often in the form of Berkshire stock. Beneficiaries are family alma maters, the University of Michigan (including a single gift of $110 million), Stanford University ($43 million), and Harvard University. Endowments include a named professorship in business at Stanford University Law School; the Munger Research Center wing of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; and the Munger Science Center at Harvard-Westlake School, a Los Angeles preparatory school where many Munger offspring have been educated.