July 30, 1999
The gift from Robert K. and Dale Jellison Weary comes from a $4 million charitable lead annuity trust they established with the Harvard Management Company. About $3 million of the trust is being sent to Harvard University, where Robert Weary received his bachelor's and law degrees.
More than $1 million is going to the Kansas University Endowment Association to help support the Lied Center Performance Fund, the Dale Jellison Weary Scholarship Fund and the newly established LeWan Alexander Spiritship Fund.
The trust's annual $70,000 payments for 15 years will be split between the Weary Scholarship Fund, Alexander Fund and the Lied Center, KU's performing arts facility, in the first 10 years. In the last five years, the payments will go solely to the Weary Scholarship Fund.
This is the Wearys' second gift for the performance fund. It will help KU Endowment meet a challenge from the Ernst F. Lied Foundation, Las Vegas, which will donate $1 million for the performance fund if KU Endowment raises $2 million by May 2000.
The gift for the Lied Performance Fund will help make possible appearances at the Lied Center by nationally and internationally known performers. The performance fund not only brings top-ranked performers to KU, but it also supports workshops led by the performers and discussions with local schoolchildren, KU students and Lied Center patrons. The fund also provides tickets at low or no cost to people who would not otherwise be able to attend.
"We are very grateful for this gift," said Lied Center Executive Director Jackie Davis. "The Lied Performance Fund is enabling the Lied Center to introduce the best in the performing arts to a much broader range of people than we could have ever dreamed."
The Wearys established the Dale Jellison Weary Scholarship Fund in 1992. The fund provides renewable scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students in KU's School of Fine Arts. Students with the greatest financial need receive the scholarships.
The LeWan Alexander Fund is a new venture of the University Theatre designed to pay tribute to the spirit of the late actor, a native of Junction City.
Alexander attended KU from 1979 to 1983, then returned as a faculty member from 1990 to 1992. At the time of his death in October 1995, he was an actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
The Wearys met Alexander when he was a high school student participating in productions at the Junction City Little Theatre. The couple supported his education at KU and traveled throughout the country to see Alexander perform.
The Alexander Fund will support a variety of activities to "celebrate and extend" the kinds of contributions Alexander made to the University Theatre, said James Still, a 1982 KU graduate from Venice, Calif., who chairs the Alexander Fund Steering Committee.
Among these activities will be supporting guest artists who can serve as role models for KU students of color in University Theatre productions, promoting an increase in the number of University Theatre productions dealing with multiracial issues, and enhancing the multiracial awareness of University Theatre audiences.
"LeWan touched a lot of people," Still said. "He was passionate, articulate, funny, exasperating, talented, demanding, mysterious, loving, infuriating, generous. I want to make this spiritship happen so we can honor LeWan's unique spirit and all he brought to the University Theatre and the KU Department of Theatre and Film and later in his professional career as an actor performing around the world."
Delbert Unruh, director of the University Theatre, said the establishment of the LeWan Alexander Fund fulfilled a dream.
"We are overjoyed and humbled by the generosity and vision of Mr. and Mrs. Weary," Unruh said. "Their gift touches and enriches the future of the faculty, staff and students just as LeWan's presence did during the time he was with us."
Dale Weary graduated from KU in 1946 with a bachelor's degree in music education. After graduating, she taught piano and participated in musicals and plays presented by the Junction City Little Theater, for which she also served as director.
Robert Weary also grew up in Junction City. He graduated with honors from Harvard University, then served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1948 before going to work at Stinson, Mag, Thomson, McEvers and Fizzell, a Kansas City law firm.
His legal career was interrupted by the Korean War, during which he trained as a jet fighter pilot, but was transferred to the staff judge advocate general's corps at the time of the adoption of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In 1955, Weary returned to Junction City and began practicing law with his father.
He recently retired as the senior partner in the law firm of Weary, Davis, Henry, Struebing and Troup, Kaus & Ryan, L.C., and now is "of counsel." He also has also been active in the cable television business and the cellular telephone industry as well as other businesses. He owns several radio stations, having sold several in the Top 50 markets in the United States, and served on the governor's subcommittee to develop a plan for the future of telecommunications in Kansas.
The Wearys have three children: Robert K. Weary Jr., Belleville, who works in the cable television industry; Gifford Weary-Angelo, a KU graduate who is a professor of clinical psychology at Ohio State University; and Dale Ann Clore, Manhattan, Kan., who is married to a professor at Kansas State University. The couple have four grandchildren, one of whom is a National Merit scholar now attending KU.
The Wearys are members of the KU Alumni Association and the Chancellors Club, KU's major-donor organization.
The gift will be administered by the KU Endowment Association, an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-management foundation for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, the KU Endowment Association is the oldest foundation of its type at a public university in the United States and one of the largest.