Harold Kline’s generous gift to Mizzou philosophy
Activities | Kline Workshops | Harold Kline
A $1.4 million bequest from alumnus Harold Kline has enabled the Philosophy Department to begin a search for a renowned philosopher who will support MU's interdisciplinary program in bioethics.
Kline, who died in 1998, planned the bequest to establish a chair in philosophy. The Florence G. Kline Chair in the Department of Philosophy memorializes Kline's mother, the granddaughter of James S. Rollins. In 1872, the University of Missouri Board of Curators recognized Rollins as Pater Universitatis Missouriensis, father of the University of Missouri.
The Kline Chair qualifies for the Missouri Chair and Professorship Program, which matches the annual distribution of an endowed chair or professorship with funds provided by the state of Missouri.
Professor Peter Markie says Kline gave the department a great opportunity. "He was a delightful, extremely modest man who deliberately shied away from any formal recognition of his generosity," Markie says. "His interest was simply in recognizing his love for, and his debt to, philosophy in a way that would best serve the department. We owe him many thanks."
The total of Kline's estate gift to MU is nearly $1.6 million. The remaining $192,913 was directed to the James S. Rollins Scholarship endowment fund.
Kline practiced law with a private firm in New York City in the late 1930s and later took a position with Texas Gulf Corp. in New York, serving as vice president and general counsel until his retirement in 1975. In other positions, he did legal work for General Electric in Milwaukee, was in private practice in St. Louis in the 1940s and served as general counsel for the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank in the early 1950s.
A 1932 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of MU, Kline studied economics as a major and philosophy as a minor. He earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1935, where he had been a member of the Harvard Law Review.
During World War II, Kline enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army and earned the rank of major, working in the Office of the Judge Advocate General. Returning to Columbia for retirement in 1977, Kline often attended University and Philosophy Department functions. He was 88 when he died of bone cancer.