The W.P. Carey Foundation of New York has donated $3 million to the Calvert School in Baltimore, the largest single gift in the school's 107-year-old history.
Baltimore native and Calvert alumnus Francis J. Carey, who left the city 60 years ago and became an executive at W.P. Carey and Co. and the president of the foundation, said some of his happiest memories of childhood were from his days at the school in Baltimore's Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood.
"Calvert is such a great school, and I have always loved Baltimore," said Carey, who makes frequent trips from his home in the Philadelphia suburbs to visit family and friends in the Baltimore area.
The Carey family has strong ties to the school and the city, he said, and is donating the money to help endow Calvert's new middle school, which opened this year for pupils in fifth through eighth grades.
Carey, 77, is a lawyer and vice chairman of W.P. Carey, one of the largest owners of net-leased commercial and industrial real estate in the world. The foundation he leads has donated at least $64 million to educational institutions this year.
The Calvert gift is the third donation this year from the foundation to Baltimore institutions. A $10 million donation was made to the Gilman School in North Baltimore for the permanent endowment of Carey Hall and a $1 million gift went to the Maryland Historical Society for the Carey Center for Maryland Life.
"It is my expectation and desire that this gift will further enable the Calvert School to continue its tradition of excellence as set forth by Calvert's first headmaster, Virgil Hillyer, more than a century ago," Carey said.
Calvert Headmaster Merrill Hall will announce the $3 million gift tomorrow at a dedication ceremony of the middle school, which will be named Francis J. Carey Hall.
Carey said he was "very humbled" that Calvert is naming the middle school after him, but the primary objective of the foundation is to help educational institutions.
"The Carey family has been very supportive of Baltimore and a great supporter of Calvert," Hall said. "This generous gift will enable us to kick off our capital campaign."
The school is hoping to raise $10 million, and Hall is optimistic that the goal will be reached because of Carey's gift.
Carey left Baltimore in 1943 to go to Princeton, but his education was interrupted by World War II. He later earned an undergraduate and law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and did graduate work at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also taught at the University of Pennsylvania.
He and his brother, William Polk Carey, chairman of the New York-based investment firm and of the foundation, attended Calvert, which then went to the sixth grade. After graduation from Calvert, they attended Gilman School in North Baltimore, founded in 1897 by their grandmother, Anne Galbraith Carey, as the area's first private day school.
