Suzie Glazer Burt was recalling the other day how her father, then Drake University Board of Trustees Chairman Edward Glazer, hired Mick Ferrari as president of Drake University, then told her mother, “I just got you a Ferrari! And she said, ‘But Ed, I don’t drive Ferraris.’” (Her mother, Maddie Leavitt, famously drove a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.) “He said, Well, he’s coming for dinner.”

One more story: Maddie Leavitt could clear out an elevator quicker than anyone, her daughter reports. Why? “You don’t raise more than $300 million for various causes without having your elevator speeches polished and ready at any moment. “Mom had an ability to ask anybody for anything,” Burt said. “People, when they would see her coming, they would step out of the elevator because they were afraid they were going to get the elevator talk from Maddie and it could cost somebody a thousand dollars or a million dollars.”