MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (5/2/2005) -- The university's Minnesota Landscape Arboretum dedicated its newly opened Visitor Center Sunday (May 1) as the Oswald Visitor Center, named for Charles W. Oswald and family, who gave $13.5 million toward the $20 million facility.

Oswald anonymously made one gift of $10 million for the visitor center, the single largest donation in the arboretum's history, in 2000. In 2002, he made an additional gift of $3.5 million to complete construction of the building and surrounding gardens.

Oswald said that his dedication to the arboretum was influenced by his wife, Sally Pegues Oswald, who died in 1996. "My wife always loved to go to the arboretum, and I know she would have loved going there today as much as I do," said Oswald. "It was she who introduced me to it when our children were young. I wanted to do something in her memory that would have meant a lot to her, and the arboretum, with its commitment to serving children and families, fits in closely with the values that we as a family believed in."

Oswald also gave $1.5 million in 1999 to create the Sally Pegues Oswald--A Growing Place for Kids, which tripled the size of the learning center. That gift strengthened the arboretum's ability to serve the 53,000 children and families who take part each year in its hands-on educational programs.

"Charley Oswald has been a very special friend to the arboretum and has made an incredible impact on this unique institution," said Peter Olin, arboretum director. "Because of his gifts, we have been able to expand and enrich the ways that we reach out to the quarter of a million people who visit the arboretum every year, to teach them about the biological world."

During his business career, Oswald served as president of Jostens Corp., where he worked from 1953 to 1970, and then as chair and CEO of National Computer Systems (NCS), from 1970 to 1994. Jostens provides recognition products and services for the youth, education and sports markets. NCS, sold to a British firm in 2000, provided student testing services and accounting systems to educational institutions.

Oswald also chaired the Owatonna, Minn. school board for 13 years. He said his experiences with educational and children's issues influenced his commitment to improving the quality of education, which he has supported through philanthropy.

The 45,000-square-foot Oswald Visitor Center, which opened to the public in January, now serves as the formal entry point to the arboretum's 1,040 acres of gardens, plant collections and natural landscapes. The central space of the new building is the McQuinn Great Hall, with 40-foot ceilings supported by custom Douglas fir timber trusses. Other features are a high-tech visitor information hub, an expanded gift shop and restaurant, the new Reedy gallery, a 375-seat MacMillan Auditorium, the Wall Education Wing with high-tech classrooms and adjacent teaching garden, and six outdoor terraces and landscaped areas that surround the facility. Environmentally friendly operating systems, such as geothermal energy cooling and heating and storm water run-off gardens, were built into the Visitor Center and its surroundings.

Oswald's gifts were part of a six-year, $65 million comprehensive arboretum campaign that raised money for new and expanded facilities, gardens and programs and endowment funds for maintenance. Thousands of donors contributed, including 12 who gave $1 million or more. "The thousands of people who contributed to the Arboretum have made it possible for us to revitalize this nationally recognized public garden without any tax dollars," said Olin. "This is a testament to the place the arboretum holds in the hearts of so many. It is a treasure that is highly valued by our community."

The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is the largest public garden in the Upper Midwest. It is part of the College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota and is a community and national resource for horticultural and environmental information, research and public education.

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