Future
generations of UNF students in music, visual arts and business will benefit
from the generosity of a remarkable Jacksonville couple — Doran Weinstein and
Lu Ann Bear — whose bequest has funded need-based scholarships in those three academic
disciplines.
Bear,
who died in May 2011 at the age of 81, left a bequest for $800,000 to create
the Lu Ann and Doran Weinstein Memorial Scholarship Fund. The bequest will
eventually generate $34,000 a year in need-based scholarships.
The Jacksonville
couple attended music programs at UNF and had a deep appreciation for the value
of higher education in the community, said their granddaughter, Robyn Moore.
"My
grandfather loved university and college campuses,” Moore said, who explained the
motivation behind the bequest. “They traveled
extensively and wherever they went, he would insist on visiting the nearby
universities.”
When
Weinstein, a successful Jacksonville businessman, died in 1995, the terms of
his will were carried over to Bear’s will, Moore said. The will divided their
bequest according to their areas of interest — business for Weinstein, and
visual arts and music for Bear.
Bear was
born in Louisville and moved to Jacksonville in 1981 after she married
Weinstein. Moore said her grandmother left behind a very successful career in
advertising and was also an accomplished portrait painter. She built a studio in
Jacksonville and devoted much of her spare time to crafting clay pots.
Weinstein
was born in Montgomery, Ala. and graduated from the University of Alabama.
After college, he joined the U.S. Navy and served during World War II. After
the war, he became an officer and director of Tampa Shipbuilding Corp. He also
held a number of business positions in Washington, D.C., New York and
Louisville, where he met Bear. Weinstein was president of Daylight Industries
in Jacksonville at the time of his retirement.
The
three scholarship funds will help achieve the couple’s goal of supporting
higher education, said Dr. Pierre Allaire, UNF’s vice president of
Institutional Advancement. “The generosity of this couple exemplifies the
commitment to higher education we see in our community,” Allaire said. “We are
grateful for the gift and are thrilled with the prospect of assisting more
students to obtain a transformational education at UNF.”
