Many people dedicate their lives to service, but Donald Mickelwait has taken the next step. He’s dedicated his death.
A University graduate who is still alive and healthy, Mickelwait has spent his life working in international development and has promised that he will donate $1 million to the University’s libraries upon his death, Director of Library Development Lisa Manotti said. The money will be used at the library’s discretion, so that they can address problems that may not exist now but will in the future, she said.
In an e-mail, Mickelwait said he “decided that many alumni were supporting the sport teams (certainly a good cause even if the football team used a bit of help from officialdom in beating Oklahoma) but that I might find more personal satisfaction supporting the library.”
“He’s an intellectual,” Dean of Libraries Deborah Carver said; “a problem solver.”
Mickelwait has spent his professional life bringing together elements that foster sustainable growth in agriculture and economy in developing nations. In the past three years he has traveled to Iraq to help spur agricultural development, designed relief proposals in Vietnam, led a small-business development team in the Kosovo province of Serbia and designed projects to alleviate poverty in Cambodia, according to his Web site.
Despite the global reach of his work, despite his innate curiosity, despite his status as a “lifelong learner,” Carver said “he’s just one guy from Eugene.”
Mickelwait graduated from Eugene High School and worked for the Emerald during his freshman year at the University. He graduated in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force, living in Okinawa, Japan and in the Philippines, where he “got a taste for Asia.”
In 1959 he returned to the University to earn his master’s degree in development economics, and it was during his graduate studies that he began using the libraries more extensively.
“I was a dedicated user in my time at Oregon and thought that the early adoption of open stacks was a real contribution by my own learning process,” he wrote.
Upon graduating he got a job with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and spent seven years living in Thailand.
“This was the period of the Vietnam war, and I stayed in Thailand in preference to engaging in that conflict close by,” he wrote.
After returning to the United States, he enrolled at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to study for his master’s degree in public administration, where he met a few like-minded souls with whom he would eventually found Development Alternatives, Inc. The company lost money for its first seven years, but he said it later became one of the largest and most successful in its industry.
After 30 years as the company’s CEO, Mickelwait stepped down in 2000 to pass the helm to the next generation and to spend the next three years representing the company in China.
In 2003, he and several “other ex-DAI managers purchased a spinoff from DAI called Experience International Inc.” that, according to its Web site, offers consulting for agricultural, environmental and natural resource management, small business development and international trade.
Last year, while visiting the University for his 50th class reunion, Mickelwait was inspired to share some of the wealth he has accumulated in his world travels via a
trust fund.
“While my endowment is a gift to the university,” he wrote, “I gain in several ways. First, I have already benefited from my solid educational background, which is a requirement for entry into the development consulting industry. Second, this gift is established as a Trust… which provides both tax savings and annual income insofar as I remain extent. So it was not only a good/right thing to do, it was a sensible
financial strategy.”
Mickelwait now lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand.
Contact the freelance editor at [email protected]
Brendon Supplee contributed reporting to this article