FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 7, 2001
CONTACT:
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119
DRAKE UNIVERSITY TO NAME PHARMACY HALL IN HONOR OF ALUMNUS MORGAN E. CLINE
Drake University’s Pharmacy and Science Hall will soon be renamed in honor of 1953 alumnus Morgan E. Cline, a native Iowan and founding partner of Cline, Davis & Mann, a New York advertising agency specializing in pharmaceuticals.
A ceremony marking the name change will be held at 12:15 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, at Pharmacy and Science Hall, 28th Street and Forest Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa. The building, which opened in 1992, will be renamed the Morgan E. Cline Hall of Pharmacy and Science.
Cline, who grew up on a farm near Exline in southern Iowa, has endowed a scholarship fund for pharmacy students with a $5 million gift to Campaign Drake, the University’s $190 million fundraising effort.
"Drake has a longstanding commitment to guarantee access to qualified and deserving students, regardless of ability to pay," said Drake President David Maxwell. "Morgan Cline’s remarkably generous gift will be of great assistance to us in maintaining and enhancing that commitment."
Cline’s interest in funding scholarships stems from working his way through Drake with the help of academic scholarships. "Money was so tight that he would buy two loaves of bread, a couple of cans of pork and beans, some potted meat and a jar of peanut butter – then try to make it last all week," said Stephen Hoag, Dean of Drake’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
After graduating from Drake in 1953, Cline attended two years of medical school at the University of Iowa and served as a pharmacist in the U.S. Army for two years. He went on to work in a New Jersey pharmacy that was threatened by rioting in the late 1960s. Changing career paths, he joined an advertising agency as an account executive working with pharmaceutical clients.
Cline worked for three different ad agencies before founding Cline, Davis & Mann with two of his colleagues in 1984. Among his agency’s largest and most important clients is Pfizer, Inc., maker of Viagra, Norvasc, Lipitor, Ben-Gay and Unisom. This relationship spans over 35 years. His agency was named Agency of the Year in 1997 by Medical Advertising News and was voted by its peers as the most admired agency in the health-care advertising world in 1998, 1999 and 2001. In 1997, Cline and his partner sold the agency to Omnicom Group, Inc., one of the world’s largest advertising agency conglomerates. After the sale, Cline stayed on as Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of Cline, Davis & Mann. He now divides his time between his estates in Middletown, N.J., and Palm Beach, Fla.
Cline’s $5 million gift to Drake is just one of his many contributions to Iowa. He is a major benefactor of Centerville, the county seat near his hometown of Exline. Cline recently endowed the local hospital with a $1 million gift and was the lead donor in a successful effort to build and equip an Emergency Medical Response facility in his hometown – Exline. His lifelong dedication to historic preservation led him to the transformation of the failing Continental Hotel on the Centerville Town Square into apartments for independent-living senior citizens and an elegant restaurant. Other preservation projects of note are the transformation of an old stone mansion into "The Shoppes at Bradley Hall," the rescue of the old Ritz Theater and two empty derelict stores on the square and the complete restoration of a magnificent Queen Anne Victorian house nearby.
His newest Centerville projects including restoring an historic Greek revival mansion, "The Columns," which will house many new retail shops and, his most ambitious project to date, the construction of a large, state-of-the-art assisted living facility – The Continental at St. Joseph’s.
Cline's generosity has invigorated the community and helped turn it into a town with a true "renaissance" spirit. It has earned him the Centerville Citizen of the Decade Award from a grateful community.