Member Spotlight: Dorothy Saxe ’46

Posted on Thursday, July 13, 2017

Dorothy Ruby Saxe ’46 has made a gift to Northwestern every single year since graduating 71 years ago, making her the NU Loyal member with the longest active giving record. She offers a simple explanation for why she supports Northwestern year after year.

“Because that’s what you do,” says Saxe, a great-grandmother who lives in Menlo Park, California. “You support your alma mater and your community.”

As a student, Saxe majored in psychology but loved theater and gained a deep appreciation for all the arts at Northwestern. She became a prominent art collector and cultural philanthropist.

One Northwestern class in particular—Art in Action, taught by the philosopher Baker Brownwell—showed Saxe a whole new way to see art.

“It wasn’t just looking at art, per se,” she says, “but how you look at a lot of things in life and the value of doing and creating.”

Beyond art, Saxe fondly remembers campaigning with her Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority sisters on behalf of legendary Northwestern journalism professor Curtis McDougall ’26 MS, who ran for US Congress in 1944. “One of my sorority sisters was a very clever songwriter, and she would create little campaign jingles,” says Saxe. “Although McDougall did not win, it was a valuable lesson about politics, campaigns, and civic responsibility.”

It wasn’t just looking at art, per se,” she says, “but how you look at a lot of things in life and the value of doing and creating.”

Saxe has been a resident of the Bay Area since she and her late husband, George, moved to California in 1959. She has three children, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren and last returned to campus in 2000 to watch grandson David Saxe ’00 graduate from the University. “Campus is so different, and Northwestern is so much more of an international University,” she says. “This is impressive.”

Saxe and her husband earned renown for their art collection, which has been featured in many museums around the country, including a named gallery in the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Saxe is a platinum-level member of NU Loyal and has made consistent gifts to the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences—Judd A. Weinberg ’47, Trustee, was a classmate—and to the Block Museum of Art. “I’m bowled over when I read the quarterly publications about the school,” she says. “It’s a first-class university, and I’m very proud to support it and to be an alumna.”