Dorothy Park, who supported NCSU and UNC, dies at 103

Dorothy Dent Park, the Raleigh native who along with her husband, Roy, donated millions to N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill and established the Park Scholarships at NCSU, died in Ithaca, N.Y., over the weekend. She was 103.

Part of the Parks’ fortune came from the sale of Hines-Park Foods, the company behind the Duncan Hines line of products, to Procter & Gamble in 1956. Roy Park had founded the company with the well-known food critic Duncan Hines a few years earlier. He later used the stock he acquired in the sale to start Park Broadcasting Inc., which owned radio and TV stations and later newspapers, mostly in small- and medium-size markets. The company became Park Communications and went public in 1983.

After Roy Park died in 1993, Dorothy Park sold Park Communications and put the proceeds into the couple’s Park Foundation, with the goal of supporting academic institutions where her husband served, worked or studied, including his alma mater, NCSU.

NCSU began offering Park Scholarships in 1996, providing four years of tuition and expenses to exceptional undergraduate students. The scholarships were supported with yearly grants from the foundation until 2013, when the Park Foundation gave $50 million – the largest single gift in NCSU history – toward the program. Another Park fellowship program supports graduate students at the School of Media and Journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Dorothy Park also financed the Dorothy and Roy Park Alumni Center at NCSU and the Roy H. Park Library at the UNC journalism school.

Dorothy Dent Park was born in Raleigh in 1912 and attended both Peace and Meredith colleges, where she majored in English and sociology. She met her husband on a blind date after he had graduated from NCSU with a degree in business administration. The couple moved to Ithaca in 1942, when he was hired to run an ad agency for the Grange League Federation, a farm cooperative that later became Agway.

The couple put down roots in Ithaca, where she was active in numerous organizations and causes and where they lived the rest of their lives. In addition to NCSU and UNC, their philanthropy also included large gifts to Cornell University and Ithaca College, among other organizations.

Dorothy Park is survived by two children. A memorial service for Park will be held in Ithaca on Thursday, June 30.

This story was originally published June 21, 2016 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Dorothy Park, who supported NCSU and UNC, dies at 103."