Case giving big
donation to Punahou

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

A multimillion-dollar gift from Internet billionaire Steve Case and his family will enable Punahou School to largely rebuild its middle school for grades 6 through 8, build new buildings and renovate two existing ones.

The school said today that the Case funding also will enable it to completely rethink its education programs for the middle school.

The school declined to say just how much Case is giving but Laurel Bowers Hussain, Punahou director of development, said it will run to several million. Case is a 1976 Punahou graduate whose mother used to teach at the school.

At the same time Case's donation brings big changes to the middle school, another multi-million-dollar gift, from former Honolulu Advertiser owner Thurston Twigg-Smith,, will bring big changes to the junior school, she said.

Honolulu-born Case, who founded America Online and is now chairman of communications giant AOL Time Warner Inc., first offered a big donation to Punahou last year and it is that offer that is now turning to definite plans.

The private school had been looking into renovation of the junior school. "And then when Steve took an interest in this and made a lead gift for it, we really took the lid off," Hussain said. "It certainly allowed us to think, and that in itself was a wonderful gift," she said.

She said plans will be finished soon for the physical work and it will go out to bid, with the objective of breaking ground in January and finishing the work in time for the start of 2003-04 school year. The Twigg-Smith funds will go into developing a "Center for Public Service," as a gathering place for the junior school that will be used by the whole campus.