Editors’ Note: This feature appears as it was published in the spring 2022 edition of UT Dallas Magazine. Titles or faculty members listed may have changed since that time.
Peter O’Donnell Jr., a visionary force behind the expansion of UT Dallas and one of its most generous benefactors, died Oct. 10, 2021. He was 97.
Known for their civic and business leadership, Peter and his wife, Edith O’Donnell, who died in 2020, established the O’Donnell Foundation in 1957. Their foundation has played an inimitable role in advancing higher education and scientific research throughout Texas. Their financial contributions over the years to UT Dallas alone total more than $40 million.
“Peter O’Donnell Jr. was perhaps the most influential Texan of his generation,” UT System Chancellor James B. Milliken said. “Few people have done as much to advance the state of Texas as a powerhouse for research and innovation.”
O’Donnell was instrumental in securing $6 million in the late 1980s from the Texas Legislature to enable UT Dallas to begin granting four-year undergraduate degrees.
“Peter O’Donnell Jr.’s leadership in securing for UT Dallas the authority to teach engineering and to have a full, legitimate four-year undergraduate program made possible all that has been accomplished in the succeeding decades,” said Dr. Richard C. Benson, UT Dallas president. “His advocacy and his generosity, along with that of his wife and their foundation, have changed UT Dallas — and the world — for the better in profound ways.”
The O’Donnell support included a $1 million fund for Presidential Scholarships in 1989 and a $5 million endowment for a Leadership Fund for the University president in 2005. A $5 million anonymous gift in 2012 helped to establish the Texas Biomedical Device Center.
Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr.
“Peter O’Donnell Jr. was fundamental to the development and growth of UT Dallas — as he was for so many institutions,” said Dr. Inga Musselman, provost and vice president for academic affairs. “Both he and Edith O’Donnell, through their philanthropy and volunteerism, worked tirelessly — and for many decades anonymously — to elevate education, access to the arts, and medical care and research across Texas and beyond.”
He and his wife were key supporters in adding the “A” — arts — to the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) curriculum for which the University is known. In 2013 the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building was dedicated in her honor. The following year, they made a $17 million gift to establish the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. The O’Donnells also made several multimillion-dollar donations to establish endowments for faculty in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication. Most recently, the foundation made a multimillion-dollar commitment toward the construction of the UT Dallas Athenaeum.
Dr. Hobson Wildenthal and Peter O’Donnell Jr.
Born April 21, 1924, O’Donnell grew up in Highland Park, Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of the South in Tennessee and a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
After three years of service in the Navy during World War II, he returned to Texas and met Edith Jones in 1948. They married in 1952 and have three daughters, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
– Heidi Harris Cannella
