Dole donates stained glass window to institute to honor parents' memory

LAWRENCE -- To honor his parents, former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole has given $100,000 for a dramatic stained glass window that will be installed in the Dole Institute of Politics building now under construction on the University of Kansas campus.

The donation brings Dole's total contributions to the institute to $300,000.

The 20-foot-tall by 12-foot-wide "Russell Window" will evoke the landscape around Dole's hometown of Russell and will be dedicated to the memory of Doran and Bina Dole. The window will grace the east wall of the institute's lobby, overlooking a stone map of Kansas on the floor.

Dole's father ran an egg and cream distribution station and, later, a grain elevator in Russell. During Dole's childhood, Bina Dole sold sewing machines and gave sewing lessons to help the family make ends meet during the hard times still recalled as "The Dirty Thirties."

The Dole Institute, established at KU in 1997 to honor the former Senate majority leader and presidential nominee, is designed to foster new thinking on major policy issues and to encourage student participation and citizen involvement in public service. The 28,000-square-foot permanent home, under construction since last October, is scheduled to be dedicated on July 22, 2003, Dole's 80th birthday.

The institute will house Dole's papers, the largest collection associated with a congressional leader -- 60 percent larger than Hubert Humphrey's papers and about six times the size of the (former House Speaker) Tip O'Neill Collection at Boston College. The Dole Institute also will feature a central 3,400-square-foot public forum, a 120-seat seminar room/media center, and an exhibit that includes Dole's World War II uniform and a 22-by-12-foot stained-glass billowing U.S. flag. To see photos of the building construction, visit the institute's Web site at http://www.doleinstitute.org

This fall, the institute will inaugurate its Presidential Lecture Series at KU. Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris, author of "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" and the recently published best-selling sequel, "Theodore Rex," will speak Sunday, Nov. 3.

Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian who is working on a trilogy based on Lyndon Johnson's secret White House tapes as well as a new account of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, will follow on Nov. 10. David McCullough, who just earned his second Pulitzer Prize for the phenomenally successful "John Adams," will speak Nov. 17. McCullough received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his biography of Harry S Truman.

The Presidential Lecture Series will be free and open to the public. Each of the lectures will begin at 8 p.m. in the Lied Center, a stone's throw from the Dole Institute's construction site.

Dole, who attended KU from 1941 to 1943, served four terms in the U.S. House and five terms in the U.S. Senate. He was elected Senate majority leader in 1984 and 1994, and he was the Republican nominee for vice president in 1976 and for president in 1996.

The gift counts toward the $500 million goal of KU First: Invest in Excellence, the largest fund-raising campaign in KU history. KU Endowment is conducting KU First on behalf of the university through 2004 to raise funds for scholarships, fellowships, professorships, capital projects and program support. KU Endowment is an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management organization for KU.