In separate estate gifts, Jayne S. Milburn and Emylou Keith have given the WSU Foundation more than $3 million that will be used to provide scholarships and faculty support for Wichita State University.
“Jayne and Emylou each had a special love for Wichita State,” said Mike Lamb, WSU Foundation vice president. “They wanted to make a strong impact on the lives of our students and faculty and, in their own way, each has done that with these remarkable legacy gifts.”
Mrs. Milburn, who died in 2016 at the age of 101, was not a graduate of Wichita State, but she and her late husband, Glenn Milburn, were longtime Wichita residents and supporters of the university. Mrs. Milburn focused much of her giving at Wichita State on the Ulrich Museum of Art and KMUW public radio. Her estate gift of nearly $2.5 million will support a scholarship for students from Wichita high schools, as well as a fellowship for graduate students.
Mrs. Milburn was well known in the Wichita community for her support of the arts, especially the Wichita Art Museum, on whose board she served for many years. She bequeathed $6.9 million to the Wichita Community Foundation to be disbursed annually to the museum, Wichita Symphony Society, Botanica and Wichita Children’s Home.
After receiving a master’s degree from Stanford University, Mrs. Milburn married Glenn Milburn, a Wichita investment banker, in 1942. They were married for more than 50 years.
Mrs. Keith, a 1950 graduate of the University of Wichita, died last February at the age of 93. Her estate gift will be directed toward a scholarship and faculty support fund, both in the W. Frank Barton School of Business. The WSU Foundation anticipates that Mrs. Keith’s gift will provide an additional $300,000 once the estate is fully settled, for a total gift of more than $900,000.
Mrs. Keith’s sister, Betty Dutcher, also was a WU graduate. The business funds supported by Mrs. Keith’s gift will honor Mrs. Dutcher’s work as an early entrepreneur in Wichita, where she and her husband, Charles, owned and operated the Dupaco Paint Co.
Mrs. Keith earned a degree in psychology at Wichita University and began a long career in nursing administration in Missouri, eventually becoming executive director of the Missouri State Board of Nursing. She married Farris Keith in 1956. Upon her sister’s death in 2001, Mrs. Keith established the Emylou Keith and Betty Dutcher Faculty of Distinction Professorship at Wichita State University.