John W. ’39 and Muriel T. S. Landis have made a $1 million
commitment to the Lafayette Leadership Campaign to create a major
endowment supporting community outreach. The Landis Community Outreach
Program will be dedicated June 5, during John Landis’s 60th
Reunion.
Lafayette students conduct more than 25 programs of sustained voluntary
service annually. During the current academic year, approximately
950 of Lafayette’s 2,200 students – more than 40 percent
– contributed more than 33,000 volunteer hours to the community.
Among other activities, the students tutor, mentor, and coach children;
work with homeless men, women and children; brighten the lives of
senior citizens; tutor prisoners; help adults learn English as a
second language; and coordinate a holiday gift-giving program for
needy families.
Lafayette has
received more than $129 million in gifts and pledges toward the
$143 million goal of the Lafayette Leadership Campaign, the largest
campaign in the Lafayette's history and one of the most ambitious
fundraising efforts ever undertaken by an undergraduate institution
of Lafayette's size. Publicly launched in October 1997, the campaign
is scheduled to run through June 30, 2001.
"Once again
we are very grateful to John and Muriel Landis for their generous
support of Lafayette," says President Arthur J. Rothkopf ’55.
"The community outreach program is an extraordinarily worthy
project and one in which I and the entire Lafayette family take
great pride."
"Muriel
and I have enjoyed our voluntary efforts so much we would like to
help others find the same fulfillment," John says. "We
look upon the community outreach program as a means of doing just
that."
The Landises,
now of Weston, Mass., grew up in Phillipsburg, N.J., and are especially
pleased that their new endowment will benefit residents of the Easton/Phillipsburg
area. John graduated summa cum laude, was valedictorian and won
the Pepper Prize, awarded annually to the senior who most closely
represents the "Lafayette ideal." He is the eldest of
five brothers who earned degrees at Lafayette, including Paul E.
Landis ’42, Richard B. Landis ’43, Glenn K. Landis ’44,
and Edwin C. Landis Jr. ’56. Their father, Edwin C. Landis
Sr., who resided in Phillipsburg from 1916 to 1981, joined his five
sons and one grandson in the ranks of Lafayette alumni when the
College awarded him an honorary master of arts degree in 1993.
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