$5 Million Gift Caps Seattle University Drive

A four-year fund-raising campaign at Seattle University is ending the way it began: with a $5 million donation.

The two $5 million gifts came in separately during the school's 21st Century Campaign: one at the start of the drive from the Seattle-based Norcliffe Fund, and the other more recently from a Los Angeles family foundation.

The donations are the single largest in the university's 104-year-old history.

The campaign began in the fall of 1991 and has exceeded its $55 million goal, but final results will not be announced until the end of the month.

The early gift from the Norcliffe Fund will help pay for the construction of a Student Center, which is expected to break ground within the next two years. The Norcliffe Fund provides grants in a variety of areas, ranging from health and education to social services, civic improvement, religion, the arts and youth programs.

The latest mega-gift is from the Arline and Thomas J. Bannan Foundation in Los Angeles. It will provide for an endowed faculty chair in the university's School of Science and Engineering, as well as scholarships and equipment needs.

"Thomas Bannan was a friend of science and engineering education at Seattle University for more than 40 years," Seattle University president the Rev. William J. Sullivan said in a statement.

Bannan, who died in 1993 at age 92, bought the Seattle-based Western Gear Corp., a tool manufacturing and distribution company, in 1929.

The business executive served as Seattle University's first chairman of the board of regents in 1951.

Even though he moved his company to California in 1967, he kept ties with the university. His contributions over the years helped build a complex of buildings now known as the Thomas J. Bannan Center for Science and Engineering.

Seattle University, founded in 1891, is one of 29 Jesuit colleges and universities in the nation and describes itself as the largest independent institution in the Northwest.