Don and Audrey Walsworth have given an $8.3 million gift to the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, Chancellor Brady J. Deaton announced Tuesday at a news conference in the Reynolds Alumni Center.
Don Walsworth, a 1957 MU graduate, is a former chairman of the University of Missouri Board of Curators. He has served on the Trulaske College of Business development board and the For All We Call Mizzou comprehensive campaign national steering committee, as well as athletic committees, including the Sports Park campaign.
He is chief executive officer of Walsworth Publishing Co., the family business located in Marceline, Mo., through which the family gift was given.
The gift will support improvements to athletic facilities, including renovations to Memorial Stadium, and a new clubhouse for MU golf teams at The Club at Old Hawthorne. The new clubhouse will house coaches’ offices, team locker rooms, indoor heated hitting bays and the latest in swing instruction technology.
The Walsworth family has several connections to MU.
Audrey, a Mizzou graduate, wrote The University of Missouri: 150 Years (Walsworth, 1989). Two of their children — Edgar Walsworth and Lynn Walsworth Wood — graduated from MU.
“Many of you know that we are in the beginning stages of a comprehensive campaign,” Deaton said at the announcement. “We have a working goal of $1 billion-plus, and we are so grateful to the Walsworth family for this early and important investment.”
— Dale Smith