A gift worth more than $1 million from the estate of Opal Gaines designated to the Wichita State University Foundation will now benefit students through the Opal and Keith Gaines Athletic Scholarship and the Opal and Keith Gaines Academic Scholarship.

Each fund is to begin being awarded during the 2011-12 academic year.

Opal Gaines died Jan. 25, 2008; her husband, Keith Gaines, died March 12, 2003.

The Gainses contributed to the Wichita work force and Wichita State for many years. Opal and Keith were born and raised in Kansas, graduating from Piedmont High School and Howard High School, respectively. He attended the University of Wichita during the fall semester of 1931, but had to withdraw due to illness.

After her high school graduation, Opal was a schoolteacher for about 10 years in southeast Kansas until she and her husband moved to Wichita. While Keith was in the Navy fighting the war in the Pacific, Opal worked at Boeing and also rented the extra rooms in their house to other female Boeing employees.

Her career changed again as she kept accounting records for the service stations, car wash and rental homes she and her husband owned. Keith made it a practice to hire college students.

The Gaineses were very interested in WSU athletics and were season ticket holders for basketball and baseball, seldom missing a game or a related tip-off luncheon. Opal kept her own record of each game’s score.

For 12 years, the pair helped to financially support various athletic programs, including the improvement of the media center in the Levitt Locker Room (now in Charles Koch Arena) and the purchase of strength and conditioning equipment.

“They were a very nice couple,” said Susan Domann, director of the WSU Shocker Athletic Scholarship Organization membership. “Keith would stop by the SASO office to visit in between working on his properties.”