The family of Leo Brody has directed that more than $1.3 million of the late Kinston, N.C., business leader's estate be used to establish a scholarship fund at Duke University for students from the Carolinas, with preference to those from eastern North Carolina, President Richard H. Brodhead announced Monday.
The gift will be matched by The Duke Endowment of Charlotte at a rate of $1 for $2 given, bringing the Brody Fund's total to $2 million. The match marks the completion of the "Carolinas Challenge," a matching program funded by The Duke Endowment in 1997 that has brought more than $21 million in gifts and pledges to build scholarship endowment for Duke students from North and South Carolina.
Duke admits and enrolls more students from North Carolina than from any other state. About 1,000 students - “ more than 15 percent of Duke undergraduates - “ come from North and South Carolina. Last year the university provided more than $8 million in scholarship grants to 441 students from the Carolinas who qualify for need-based aid.
"The Brody Scholarship honors a generous and farsighted North Carolinian who believed in education, and it is a fitting conclusion to the immensely successful Carolinas Challenge," Brodhead said. "It strengthens our 'need-blind' policy that enables Duke to accept students whose accomplishments and promise qualify them for admission without regard to their economic circumstances. New resources to support this are vital -- particularly in our own state. As always, The Duke Endowment has been a wonderful partner in our efforts to fund our financial aid needs."
More than 340 contributors supported the Carolinas Challenge, whose leadership chairs were Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and his wife Mickie. Seventy-eight new scholarships were established in the effort, including one by the Krzyzewskis, and 19 existing endowments were increased.
The Brody Scholarship is the largest new endowed fund and is intended to provide scholarships for undergraduates from the part of North Carolina where Leo Brody worked and raised a family. It is established by his daughters, Marilyn Brody Lane, Marsha Brody Shiff and Hynda Brody Dalton, as well as his grandson Daniel Shiff, a graduate of both Duke's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and Fuqua School of Business.
His daughters said their family "is very proud of what Leo Brody accomplished in his life."
"We wanted to create a legacy that reflected his strong belief in the value of education," the daughters said in a statement. "The Leo Brody Scholarship will enable deserving students from the Carolinas, where he spent his life, to attend Duke. This would make our father very happy “- he always gave back to his community and helped a lot of eastern North Carolina students, from members of his own family to many local people he scarcely knew, to learn and put their education to good use."
In addition to the scholarship fund, $200,000 will go to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke, where a children's garden will be named for Charlotte Brody, Leo Brody's wife of 67 years, who preceded him in death.
Leo Brody, who died in March 2003 at age 96, was one of 11 children. His parents immigrated to New York from Poland, and then moved to Sumter, S.C. In 1928 Leo Brody came to Kinston, where he and his brothers opened Brody's Department Store. They developed the store into a retail chain.
Leo Brody successfully pursued other businesses, including radio, television, soft drink bottling and real estate throughout eastern North Carolina. In the 1960s he supported one of his brothers, Julius "Sammy" Brody, who led a group of business leaders that proposed establishing a medical school at the institution then known as East Carolina College. The school's first class enrolled in 1977 at what was later named the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, in recognition of continuous scholarship support of medical students by the Brody family.