$100M gift highlights university’s big night
The $100 million gift to Santa Clara University from John A. Sobrato and Sue Sobrato was what everyone was talking about Saturday night at the 51st annual Golden Circle Theatre Party, SCU’s big annual fundraiser.
When SCU President the Rev. Michael Engh announced the donation at San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts, the crowd of about 2,000 people responded with a thunderous standing ovation — providing a strong start to a night that included a high-energy show by Bay Area band Train.
“We’ve chosen to focus on the local community, where our real estate business has made its success,” John Sobrato said. “Santa Clara University is where many of our family was educated, and that education was a major reason for our success in business and why we selected to make this gift.”
Sobrato graduated from Santa Clara in 1960, and his class included Leon Panetta, Steve Schott, Everett Alvarez and the late Rev. Paul Locatelli, who served as Santa Clara’s president from 1988 until 2008.
Train didn’t have much of a problem following such a big announcement and did a great job engaging the black-tie audience. Frontman Pat Monahan brought up a couple of people on stage during a cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and tossed T-shirts out into the crowd.
Train follows a long line of famous performers at the $1,000-a-ticket event, which includes dinner and dancing at the Fairmont, including Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Chicago, Huey Lewis and the News, and Tony Bennett. But they’re the first musical act to play the show that got its start in the 1990s, a clear and welcome sign that SCU’s Board of Fellows, which produces the event, is reaching out to a younger generation of alums and donors.
FAREWELL TO A FUNDRAISER: About 400 people were at Presentation High School on Sunday for a celebration of the life of Jane Jeziorski, who died Dec. 15 at age 70. Jeziorski spent 25 years as the special events coordinator for the Roman Catholic girls school in San Jose, and Principal Mary Miller said her efforts putting together auctions and other events raised about $6 million to benefit students.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jane was still raising money for the school, even at her own memorial. Frank Sunseri and Lissa Kreisler auctioned off one of Jane’s signature red boas to kick-start the Jane Jeziorski Memorial Scholarship Fund. When the bidding reached $4,000, Sunseri revealed they could sell two — and doubled the total to $8,000. Jane would have been proud.
SAN JOSE YOUTH MARCHES ON: The Women’s March was a historic event for so many people here in the Bay Area and around the country, but it was even more so for 11year-old Kennedy Schoennauer, of San Jose. She was among 30 girls selected to be a “youth ambassador” for the national effort and took part in the event at the state Capitol in Sacramento.
From the steps of the Capitol, Kennedy told a crowd of about 20,000 people the lessons she’d learned in her young life, including being kind and respectful to others and that it’s more important to “do right than to be right.”