Morsani To Donate $3 Million To USF Athletics

[The_Reaper]

I like the idea Faz. As long as I can put up Reaper's Bar and Pizza across the street!!! ;D

[Rabbi Bull]

you could name the toilets after collin, the collin sherwin toilets in the mat ratner bathroom

[FazaUSF]

I like the idea Faz. As long as I can put up Reaper's Bar and Pizza across the street!!! ;D

Get outta here Reaper, we'll put it up at the front entrance and dedicate concessions as satellite stations!

(Liking the idea of the toilets.... Collin, what do you think?)

[MatRatUSF]

I want my own toilets!

[USFCollin]

Um, yeah not really... but how about the DJ Faz Public Address Booth?  It can come with horribly mixed music, bad sound equipment, and a P.A. guy who spends far too much time on the microphone?  We could even require an awkward/horrendous haircut, and have him hit on every sorority girl there instead of doing his job!

I mean if we're going to start naming appropriate things after people...

[80mins]

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!!

[Minotaur]

Don't know if anyone saw this so I'll post it. They deserve all the pub they get.

Millions later, donor still 'down-to-earth'

   Carol Morsani is so unassuming you would never suspect that she donates millions to charity and that a concert hall is named after her.

By TIM GRANT, Times Staff Writer

Published May 27, 2005

LUTZ - Her name is immortalized on the biggest performing arts theater in Tampa.

She is Carol Morsani, a reluctant public figure.

She and her husband donate millions to charity. She serves on a variety of boards benefiting the arts, education and health care. And she still has time to do her own housework.

Carol Dewitt Morsani became famous when her husband, Frank, gave a record $5-million to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in 1996.

"We're honestly amazed at our good fortune and how lucky we've been," Morsani said."We're still pinching ourselves that we're able to do what we're able to do."

For 54 years she has been married to the colorful and outgoing automobile dealer who grabbed headlines while trying to attract major league baseball to Tampa.

Yet Carol Morsani has chosen to shun publicity and avoid the limelight. Few people outside her inner circle know much about the woman behind the famous name.

The intensely private 73-year-old native of Tulsa, Okla., blooms in one-on-one conversation. She might appear standoffish in a crowd, but it's not from excessive pride. If Morsani has an excess of anything, it's humility.

"I was, as a child, not encouraged to be involved and outgoing," she says. "I was so shy, my mom made me take expression lessons in grade school. I'm not sure it helped."

People she meets at the grocery store rarely recognize the tiny woman with calm, brown eyes and an open, friendly face.

Even inside the grand theater that bears her name, there's only one image of her - a metal etching of Morsani and her husband. Neither of them believes it resembles Morsani at all.

Most often, Morsani's anonymous cover is blown after she introduces herself to visiting artists during social events at the performing arts center.

"They'll say "Oh, you're alive,' " Morsani laughed to herself. "They realize I'm a real person. Many people think you've passed away if you have something named after you. I've had that happen several times. That's kind of amusing."

Morsani found herself in the spotlight once again on May 7 when she and her husband were granted honorary doctorate degrees in Humane Letters at the University of South Florida's commencement ceremony.

The couple has given several million to USF over the years through the Frank and Carol Morsani Foundation.

She found the honorary doctorates "very surprising and pleasing."

Morsani recently agreed to serve as honorary chairperson of USF Women In Leadership & Philanthropy, a newly formed program to empower and benefit female students and faculty on campus.

She and several of Tampa Bay's leading philanthropists will encourage the growing pool of women who control wealth to contribute to USF to support education, research and service focused on issues affecting women.

"Most women outlive their husbands and need to be educated on how to manage their foundations and giving," Morsani said. "I'm not really a women's libber. I just think there's an awful lot of intelligent women who need to be recognized and given a boost."

* * *

It might come as a surprise to some people that Morsani must pay full price for each show she takes in at Morsani Hall.

There's no drum roll, no trumpets or red carpet when she arrives.

The Morsanis and their friends sit in the balcony to the left of the stage, envying folks with better seats. She thinks the balcony seats facing the center stage are the best, but those are taken and the Morsanis are not apt to throw their weight around.

"It still to this day embarrasses her that her name is on that hall," said close friend Karen Urette. "She really does stay out of the limelight."

Urette and her husband, Mike, met the Morsanis through a classified ad when they moved here in 1971. The Morsanis, who also had just arrived, were selling an extra refrigerator. The two couples have remained friends ever since.

"Carol has a wonderful sense of humor," Urette said. "She can come up with one-liners that are perfect for the circumstance. And they're always upbeat ones."

The thing that's always impressed Urette about Morsani is that she has never hired a maid for her large Pasco County home.

"When I found out she cleaned her own home, I knew she was still down-to-earth," Urette said.

But that's only half the story of Morsani's dedication to her family.

She irons all her husband's shirts. She cooks his meals each night. She helps him build and paint fences at their 650-acre cattle farm. And whenever he needs to castrate a young calf she'll roll up her sleeves and help with that, too.

"I sit on them while he does the business," she says.

Frank Morsani, 74, said he was moved to put his wife's name on the performing arts center to express his appreciation for her.

"My wife is by nature shy," he said. "She's very worried about being perceived to be something she's not. She's like Flip Wilson. What you see is what you get. She's happy with her role of being supportive of me and that has been a blessing for me."

* * *

Long before she became the wife of an automobile dealership tycoon, Morsani's old fashioned grit and raw determination helped hold her family together through some tough times.

She vividly recalls those lean years before the birth of their two daughters - Leann Rowe and Suzanne Anderson - when they lived on Frank's meager salary as a Navy seaman. They ate popcorn and ketchup soup when the money ran out before the end of the month.

"I would describe myself as ordinary," she says. "But also a neatnik, constantly picking up, straightening and throwing away things. I throw away the newspaper before my husband gets a chance to read it. He's been very tolerant that way."

Both she and her husband were raised in Tulsa, where they met in their senior year of high school.

They had one date in high school and didn't date again until a year later at Oklahoma State, which was then Oklahoma A&M.

"He was either awful slow, or I was awful boring," she says.

They married in February 1951.

In the early years, Carol Morsani worked as a telephone operator, a billing clerk and a secretary. "But that doesn't hurt you," she says. "I think you appreciate success more when you've had to work for it. You're proud of what you've accomplished."

These days, when they aren't traveling the world, the Morsanis divide their time between their two Pasco properties, one on 200 pristine acres outside Land O'Lakes and the other about 15 miles north, where they raise about 265 head of cattle.

When she's not planning a new dinner dish or pulling her own garden weeds on both properties, Morsani reads world history books and does crossword puzzles - in pen.

"I just love the challenge of recalling useless words and information," she says.

Frank Morsani credits his wife for all the compliments he gets on his perfectly pressed shirts. Morsani credits her husband with teaching her how to give.

"My mom was a doer," she says. "We didn't have a lot to give. My dad didn't give of himself, period. So, it was not a concept I grew up with. My husband taught me how to be a giver.

"He taught me that even when you don't have money, you can give of yourself. My giving started by volunteering for the Brownies, Girl Scouts, Homeroom Mom, Sunday School teacher and when we became financially able, we started giving money."

Morsani feels because the Tampa Bay area is such a new community, with newly established institutions for the arts, medicine, education and athletics, the community needs to embrace philanthropy to support them.

She and her husband have donated about $15-million over the years through their charitable foundation.

Their dream is to help local institutions establish permanence through donations. But that doesn't mean simply giving money and walking away. It means staying involved and participating on boards, she says.

Morsani serves on the boards of H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and the Tampa Museum of Art.

"The things we've been privileged to do, the places we've gone and people we've met is amazing to us," she says. "We feel we grew up as ordinary mid-American people. It amazes us."

-Tim Grant can be reached at 813 269-5311 or at grant@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 26, 2005, 08:33:06]

http://www.saintpetersburgtimes.com/2005/05/27/Northoftampa/Millions_later__donor.shtml

[Brad]

Am I the only greedy one that despite my thankfulness wish it had been the other way around - $7 mil for athletics and $6 mil ($3 mil + $3 mil match) for academics?

:-X

[FazaUSF]

Um, yeah not really... but how about the DJ Faz Public Address Booth?  It can come with horribly mixed music, bad sound equipment, and a P.A. guy who spends far too much time on the microphone?  We could even require an awkward/horrendous haircut, and have him hit on every sorority girl there instead of doing his job!

I mean if we're going to start naming appropriate things after people...

I KNOW you must be talking about some other DJ!