Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 21, 1993 TAG: 9305210125
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But Mildred and Peter A. Putnam left $37 million to the Nature Conservancy, which buys and protects land that harbors endangered plants and animals.
Before Putnam died in 1984 at age 93, she made a pact with her son to leave most of the family fortune to the nonprofit conservancy.
Peter Putnam made good on that promise before he died six years ago at age 62.
Details of the bequest were not widely known until the conservancy, based in Arlington, said in the May-June edition of its magazine that the bequest had inspired a $300 million fund-raising drive.
It's the largest single gift the conservancy has received. Its biggest contributor was 3M heiress Katharine Ordway, who gave gifts totaling more than $53 million during her lifetime.
Friends said Mildred Putnam managed the family fortune of real estate, lumber and ore holdings after her husband died in 1951.
Peter Putnam devoted his time to academic pursuits - for a while.
He received a doctorate from Princeton in 1960 and taught at the University of Massachusetts and Union Theological Seminary in New York. He quit academics in 1974 because the seminary, realizing his family was wealthy, pressed for a gift, according to a profile in the Princeton alumni magazine in 1991.
Putnam became a volunteer for the government program VISTA in Houma, La., where he eventually settled and became a state highway department night watchman.
He spent little money on himself, but continued to manage the family money after his mother died. He spent his spare time writing about physics, philosophy, psychology, history and economics. He died after he was struck by a car while riding his bicycle to work. He had no heirs.
The conservancy owns 1,300 nature preserves on 6.4 million acres in 50 states. It raised $146.4 million in 1991 as the nation's most successful fund-raiser among nonprofit environmental groups.
by CNB