New Shooter for HQ2 Breaking late. Big Mike tells me a bid’s coming for Amazon’s HQ2, joint bid of Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and perhaps Orange and Anaheim. Mayor Miguel Pulido confirms—fresh off a trip to Sacto with GG Mayor Steve Jones to see incentive-meister GO-Biz “We have a good story to tell,” Pulido tells me. More on that story next week.
Donor props: 20 years on the Old Towne campus, I saw donor Doy Henley more than most students. I learned then—education giving is different.
Mildred García sees it in her 6th year as boss of CSUF. When I asked my fellow New Yorker the hardest part of the job, she pounced: “The Budget. When I started, 80% of the budget came form the state. Today it’s 33%.” She depends on the generosity of alums and strangers.
“The annual giving was $7M in 2011, and I said, I’m sorry, this is Orange County.” She was right. The Titans come off back-to-back $20M years and ready a big campaign. The prez also pridefully notes “our students leave with average $12,000 debt. Not bad.”
Twyla: One of the first families of OC education giving was always Twyla and Chuck Martin.
Chuck passed in March. Today Twyla continues their work as angel investors—in intellectual advancement. “Chuck wanted to attract the best and the brightest to UCI,” she said. “So do I.” Martin thinks she and UCI have the perfect lure—turning the school’s honors program into an Honors College. “I could see this making UCI the Ivy League Orange County School,” she told me. Twyla’s idea includes an “OC Honors College Board. The group would spend an hour or more with the honors students at UCI—bridge the Brightest and the Best of our OC business community and the Best at UCI.”
Chuck Martin grew up poor, in small-town Ohio. He ended up with five majors and a degree in engineering physics from Ohio State. “He believed in education as the answer.”
I chatted awhile with Twyla, great energy. Met her at Chapman in the days of “The Fashionables,” now simply “The Women of Chapman.” Group’s raised over $7M without favor: library, chapel, film school.
Took Twyla a bit to regain traction after Chuck. She’s back.
Fish Outta Water: First fashion show last week. (p. 8) Took awhile. Great fun. And $1.3M for Second Harvest.
Heartbreaker: Tom Petty. 66. Bad trend in rock n’ roll.
Heartbreak: Sent Brando, aka “Bucket List,” to heaven on Tuesday to join Nixon. Bad trend.
