Alum gives $500k for renovations

03/31/2006

From the Michigan Daily, 3/28/06 Newspaper publisher Phil Power has continued his family's tradition of giving to the University with a $500,000 donation to help renovate the Student Publications Building.

The building houses The Michigan Daily, the Michiganensian yearbook and the Gargoyle humor magazine.

Power started at the Daily as a night news editor in 1959 before becoming editorial director in 1960.

In 1965 he started a newspaper company, HomeTown Communications Network. By the time he sold it in 2004 to media giant Gannett Co., Power's company controlled 65 community newspapers and many other publications, such as phone directories, in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky.

His latest project is the Center for Michigan, a politically moderate think tank that aims to find solutions to Michigan's economic woes.

Power credits the Daily with providing the spark that launched him into the newspaper business.

"I had a hell of a career," he said. "I couldn't have it, wouldn't have done it, without having been on the Daily." Power's roots at the University run deep. His parents are the namesake for the Power Center for the Performing Arts. Like his father, Eugene Power, he served as a University regent from 1987 to 1998. The Power family has given generously to other University causes as well, including the University Musical Society and the Knight Wallace Fellows.

During his time at the Daily, Power helped advance the idea of a youth volunteer organization that would become the Peace Corps through a column he wrote in 1959.

Eventually, that column reached Ted Sorensen, a key advisor to then-Sen. John F. Kennedy, who proposed the creation of the Peace Corps at a campaign stop at the Michigan Union in 1960.

The gift comes on the heels of a $3-million donation from publisher Stanford Lipsey, another Daily and University alum.