By Melody Ward Leslie, BA ’79 (humanities), a retired staff writer for University Communications
Lorry I. Lokey (Watch the Tribute Video)
Born March 27, 1927
Lorry I. Lokey, the Oregon-born entrepreneur and philanthropist whose financial generosity was exceeded only by the size of his heart, died on October 1 in Atherton, California. He was 95.
Lokey, trustee emeritus and founder of the global news service Business Wire, delighted in using his fortune to advance teaching and research on two continents through gifts that totaled more than $800 million during his lifetime.
In an interview at age 90, Lokey said: “Those of us giving grants are really betting on the kids of the future. We want them to do better than we did.”
At the University of Oregon alone, where his gifts for academic programs and facilities totaled more than $150 million, he embarked on a rescue mission in 2004 that led him to jump-start six urgently needed building projects that likely would not have broken ground for years—if at all—without him.
Although he was never a student here, Lokey treated the UO as generously as his alma mater Stanford University and three of Israel’s leading universities, said Patrick Phillips, interim president and professor of biology.
“It is hard to describe the many ways Lorry Lokey’s vision and generosity has transformed the University of Oregon,” Phillips said. “There is not a part of our campus that has not benefited from his magnificent gifts in some way. He will be dearly missed by our community, but his legacy will continue to be a part of our university for many, many years to come.”
Lokey’s career in journalism began as feature editor for Pacific Stars & Stripes, Tokyo, during World War II service. He became editor of The Stanford Daily in 1948 and earned his bachelor’s in journalism in 1949. As graduation approached, he acted on advice from a professor named George Turnbull, a decision that would later spark his own idea for Business Wire and, eventually, an early gift to the UO.
Turnbull suggested Lokey try for a job at United Press International in Portland, where he was hired as a night wire editor. He went on to become a reporter for the Daily News in Longview, Washington, before moving on to the business world, first as a Western Highway Institute administrator in San Francisco, then as a spokesman for Shell Development Co. in Emeryville, and finally as General Electric’s Western news bureau supervisor in San Francisco.
The Eureka moment leading to starting his own company came when Lokey attended a conference in Los Angeles, where he was surprised to see a teletype machine being used to transfer financial news. He started Business Wire in 1961 to serve companies wishing to publicize their press releases, on the one hand, and news organizations eager to receive and report on company news on the other. His described his location in the future Silicon Valley as fortuitous because he had a “front row seat” to some of the world’s most thrilling scientific developments.
Lokey’s ideas about giving stemmed from growing up during the Great Depression in a Jewish family that gave five percent of their modest annual income to charity even in desperate times. Years before he sold his company, he began giving away 98 percent of his annual earnings, mainly to educational institutions that held special meaning for him. In 2000, he gave his childhood grade school, Portland’s Alameda Elementary, $600,000 to build a media center and another $53,000 for a computer lab, gifts made in honor of his mother and out of gratitude for his first teachers and the librarian who “turned me onto reading.”
When the University of Oregon came calling, he jumped at the chance to honor Turnbull, who just happened to be teaching at Stanford after retiring from a career that began when he joined the UO faculty as a journalism professor in 1917 and ended with his retirement as dean in 1948. Lokey’s appreciation took the form of a gift to help create the UO School of Journalism and Communication’s George S. Turnbull Center in Portland, which opened in 2006.
By then, Lokey had formed deep friendships with UO leaders and professors he felt were kindred spirits, especially President Dave Frohnmayer, and vice president for advancement Allan Price. The pair shared ambitious plans to boost the quality of graduate and undergraduate education by building state-of-the-art facilities to support the faculty’s success in winning major grants and being productive scholars.
Intrigued, Lokey asked for a list of priorities and flew to campus from his home in Atherton, California, to see for himself. He expressed amazement over innovative biomedical research being done in leaking basements, World War II-era Quonset huts and buildings with broken HVAC systems, and he marveled at inspired teaching taking place in classrooms so crowded that many students had to stand through lectures. He informed Frohnmayer he would “begin” by making a $5 million lead gift to double the size of the music building. Soon after, at a celebratory dinner hosted by Frohnmayer and his wife Lynn, Lokey stunned all present by announcing the building should be named for Frohnmayer’s mother MarAbel.
Next he joined the UO Foundation Board of Trustees and made lead gifts that were critical for securing matching funds in the form of state bonds for another four urgently needed construction projects: the HEDCO Building and total renovation of the College of Education’s original buildings on the historic quad; Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories, the standard-setting underground hub for research at the nanoscale and smaller; the Robert and Beverly Lewis Integrative Science Building; and the Allan Price Science Commons and Research Library.
“Oregon, as fine a school as it is now, is going to start from a high level and have a Renaissance to go to higher levels yet,” Lokey said in 2006. “I want to see the University of Oregon looked at as the crown jewel of the Pacific Northwest.”
Lokey’s passion for science, particularly biomedical research, his reputation for putting his money where he felt it would make the greatest impact, and his unabashed evangelism on behalf of the UO won over dozens of alumni and friends whose own major gifts helped top off funding for these projects and more. But the balance of his giving extended well beyond brick and mortar to enrich every UO student’s education.
He single-handedly funded endowments for new programs, faculty chairs, professorships and scholarships. In one case, his previously anonymous gifts totaling $10.4 million endowed the annual Faculty Excellence Awards, which began in 2006 to support the UO’s commitment to improve its overall academic quality by supporting, recognizing and retaining faculty members at the cutting edge of research in their disciplines and emerging areas of interdisciplinary inquiry.
But his most spectacular gift was $74.5 million in 2007 to launch, in one fell swoop, the Scientific Advancement and Graduate Education Initiative, known as SAGE, which catalyzes UO teaching and research across disciplines, including the humanities and professional schools.
In response, Frohnmayer decided it was the UO’s turn to surprise Lokey, who indeed was astonished when the university announced that all science facilities on the main campus would be known collectively as the Lorry I. Lokey Science Complex.
“This extraordinary gift from this extraordinary man,” Frohnmayer said during a celebration on the steps of Johnson Hall, “will help secure the University of Oregon’s future as a major international force in scientific research and education and as Oregon’s flagship institution in the liberal arts and professional education.”
Among his more recent gifts to the UO, the award-winning Allan Price Science Commons and Research Library stands as elegant proof of the premium Lokey placed on honoring his most cherished relationships. Less than two days after Price died unexpectedly in 2012, Lokey called Lisa and John Manotti, his favorite UO fundraisers, with news that he wanted to pay tribute to his friend by lifting the UO’s science library up from its 1960 bunker and reimagining it as the model facility now emulated by other universities. When Frohnmayer died three years later, Lokey memorialized their friendship by creating the Dave Frohnmayer Chair in Leadership and Law.
Lokey was one of the first magnates to take Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, and he often expressed how lucky he felt to be able to give at such a high level. However, in the next breath, he always emphasized the importance of everyone’s gifts, regardless of size. “Every dollar is a vote for education,” he would say, a mantra he repeated at each groundbreaking, grand opening, and program launch resulting at least in part from one of his gifts.
“It is a thrill,” he said of his support for the UO. “I’m so excited seeing my money out there doing good. Not many people get this privilege.”
He said his approach for the UO set the pattern for his giving elsewhere. “I keep asking, what do you need? What is the most important thing right now? My greatest pleasure is getting more money in order to give away more money, and 98 percent of it goes into education because education is how we build up humankind.”
At the heart of Lokey’s philanthropic vison was a purposeful desire to create human connections across national borders, and he personally brought scientists at UO, Stanford and the Israeli universities together when he knew their research intersected. Richard H. Jones, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, said that Lokey’s support of education and research at Israel’s finest universities “helped strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S.”
Though he left financial support for UO athletic programs to others, Lokey loved Oregon football and even cheered for the Ducks when they were ahead of Stanford. In 2018, the proud Oregonian became a Duck for real when he received the university’s highest honor, an honorary doctorate of philosophy.
A few months earlier, the irrepressible Lokey had committed $10 million for up to five faculty chairs in the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. As always, he urged others to join him with similar gifts. It was vintage Lokey, as typical as his gleeful chuckle, twinkling eyes, off-the-rack suits (all bought on sale, he would have you know), and earnest decision to drive a Prius. He flew commercial, disdained yachts and scorned wealthy peers if they were not charitably inclined.
“Lorry personified the qualities most sorely needed in our world today: integrity, optimism, loyalty, humility, generosity, kindness and friendship,” said Jim Hutchison, Lokey Chair in Chemistry and senior associate vice president of the Knight Campus.
“Few people have done so much to transform lives and careers, particularly in such a short time, as Lorry Lokey. We will forever be grateful that he chose to become our university’s friend and champion.”
Lokey is survived by three daughters, seven grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.