Title: ELCA College Receives a $26 Million Gift ELCA NEWS SERVICE - NEWSBRIEF March 12, 1997 ST. OLAF RECEIVES A $26 MILLION GIFT St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., received a $26 million gift from Dean and Rosemarie Buntrock and their family. The gift, announced Feb. 7, is the largest single gift ever made to a Lutheran college in the United States. St. Olaf is one of 28 colleges and universities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The gift will finance the new "College Commons," a 160,000 square foot building that will house offices and work spaces for student government, student organizations, conference activities and events staff, and campus activities professional staff. It will also include a food service operation, movie theater, book store and post office. College Commons will be situated between Boe Memorial Chapel and Rolvaag Memorial Library "so that these three buildings together will create an architectural unity linking body, mind and spirit," said Mark U. Edwards, Jr., president of St. Olaf. "I came from a small town, Columbia, S.D., that had few resources to provide quality education," said Dean Buntrock, a 1955 graduate of St. Olaf. "When I came to St. Olaf, a new world was opened to me and I received an education that would forever change my life. We have been blessed, and now we're privileged to return some benefits to the college in recognition of what the faculty and college did for me many years ago," he said. Buntrock is founder and chairman of WMX Technologies, Inc., an international waste services company (known as Waste Management) based in Oak Brook, Ill. For information contact: Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask] http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html