Retired Kansas City attorney gives $500K for KU scholarship

LAWRENCE -- A retired Kansas City attorney and University of Kansas alumnus will develop a $2 million fund that someday will give KU students the same kind of help the donor received during the 1930s.

Irving Kuraner (ker-AH-ner) of Leawood recently established a charitable gift annuity through a gift of $500,000 to the Kansas University Endowment Association. The annuity will provide a lifetime income for Kuraner, and upon his death it will establish the Irving Kuraner Scholarship Fund. The scholarship also will be supported through two bequests previously pledged by Kuraner. When realized, the entire fund is estimated to total $2 million.

"I could not have paid for my education without a scholarship," said Kuraner, a former attorney for Kansas City-based American Century Investments. "I want to do this so that the young people who come to KU in the future have the same advantage I did."

The fund will provide scholarships for full-time undergraduate and graduate students in any school or course if the students have a 3.0 KU grade-point average and are in the top 20 percent of their class.

"The scholarship fund created by Irving Kuraner will provide opportunities for generations of students," Chancellor Robert Hemenway said. "We are grateful that he has chosen to establish this generous scholarship for students who strive for academic excellence at the University of Kansas."

Kuraner, political science '40, was a Summerfield scholar at KU. He said he looked forward to providing scholarships for future students.

"It pleases me that 50 or 75 years from now, some kid from KU will be able to say, 'There was a guy named Kuraner in the first 10 years of this century who left a scholarship fund that enabled me to go to school,'" Kuraner said.

Kuraner studied law at Columbia University in New York City after he graduated from KU. His education was interrupted by World War II service in the Army Air Force from 1942 until 1945, when he returned to Columbia University.

After he earned his law degree in 1946, Kuraner joined his brother, Alfred, liberal arts '30 and law '31, who was a Kansas City attorney. In 1958, Irving Kuraner began representing what then was known as Twentieth Century Investors (now American Century Investments), a mutual fund company founded in Kansas City by James E. Stowers Jr.

Kuraner continued to represent the company until 1981, when he left his law practice to join American Century. He retired as executive vice president-general counsel in 1990.

Kuraner's most recent 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 KU 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.