$15 Million Martel Gift to Support Rice Campaign, Enhance Student Life

CONTACT: Mike Cinelli

PHONE: (713)
831-4794

E-MAIL: mcinelli@rice.edu

$15 MILLION MARTEL GIFT TO SUPPORT RICE CAMPAIGN, ENHANCE
STUDENT LIFE

The Marian and Speros Martel
Foundation further strengthened its long-standing support of Rice University
with a $15 million gift to fund implementation of the university’s strategic
plan, “Rice: The Next Century.”

The gift will support a broad range of initiatives at Rice,
including programs to enhance student life.

In honor of the foundation’s tradition of philanthropy to the
university, the Rice Board of Trustees voted to name a new residential college
in honor of the Martels. The Marian and Speros Martel College, scheduled for
completion in the year 2002, will be the university’s ninth residential college
and house approximately 225 students.

“The fact that a new residential college at Rice will carry the
Martel name is most fitting,” said Rice President Malcolm Gillis. “This new
college will be a timely and enduring addition to campus life for many
generations of Rice students. With Martel College, we will move a long way
toward satisfying our strategic plan goal of housing no fewer than four-fifths
of our undergraduates on campus.”

Ralph O’Connor, president of the Martel Foundation, said: “Nothing would have pleased the Martels more than to know that their
philanthropy has had such an impact on the vitality of Rice University. More
than that, it is good to see their name in the company of the Browns, Jones and
Wiess, names on other colleges at Rice.”

The Martel’s philanthropic association with Rice began with the
will of Henry Fox Jr., Marian Martel’s brother. In his will, Fox requested
memorials in the form of grants to the university for a dormitory or gymnasium
be established in their parents’ names, Henry Fox and Lena Gohlman
Fox.

In her will, Marian Martel established four chairs at Rice in
honor of her father, mother, her first husband (William Gaines Twyman who died
of cancer in the 1920s), and sister, Gladys Louise Fox.

In addition to the family’s historic interest in Rice (Henry
Fox Sr. was a contemporary of William Marsh Rice), O’Connor said that Speros
Martel was close to a number of Houston’s business and civic leaders, most
notably George R. Brown and Jesse H. Jones, who strongly supported the
university.

Speros Martel was a self-educated man. A Greek immigrant,
Martel arrived in New York in the early 1900s at the age of 14. He served as a
messenger on Wall Street before departing on a cross-country journey that, over
the years, led him from Detroit to San Francisco and then Houston, where he
enlisted in the army near the end of World War I at Camp Logan.

After being discharged, he worked for a short time as a waiter
at the Rice Hotel. He became a restaurateur during the 1920s before turning to
real estate and investment activities as his profession.

Since 1956, the giving spirit of Marian and Speros
Martel–through the Martel Foundation–has touched the lives of many
Houstonians. The first gifts went to the DePelchin Faith Home to establish
college scholarships for boys and girls, to help “relieve the suffering of
cancer patients,” and to establish chairs at Rice. Major gifts have also been
given to Martel’s church, the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral and to the
Annunciation Orthodox School.

Since then, the Martel Foundation has provided financial
backing to a number of campus projects in the past, including Martel Hall in the
Anne and Charles Duncan Hall, an endowed chair in computational engineering, the
Marian and Speros Martel Continuing Studies Center, the faculty lounge in George
R. Brown Hall, the Speros P. Martel Harp Suite in Alice Pratt Brown Hall, and
the Henry and Lena Fox Gymnasium.

Rice University is a leading American research
university–small, private, and highly selective–distinguished by its superior
teaching, commitment to undergraduate education, outstanding graduate and
professional programs, residential college system, collaborative and
interdisciplinary culture, and global perspective.

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