He was a college dropout, forced to leave the University of Arizona in 1925 after his father took ill.
Even so, Roy P. Drachman gave close to $5 million to the UA — and helped raise hundreds of millions more.
In 1983, Drachman became the school's first $1 million donor, with money going to the Arizona Cancer Center.
In 1987, he helped spearhead the school's Century II campaign, which raised nearly $200 million — twice as much as its original goal.
Jim Manilla, former vice president of development operations for the UA Foundation, says, "I remember we had an outside consultant do a feasibility study for a potential goal. His recommendation was $75 million.
"Roy immediately said ASU (Arizona State University) had a $100 million campaign and we could do no less."
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The campaign concluded in 1992 just shy of $200 million.
Beginning in 1997 until his death in 2002, Drachman also served on a Campaign Arizona committee that helped raise $1.2 billion for the university.
His name is on several UA venues he supported financially, including track and field's Roy P. Drachman Stadium, as well as the Drachman Institute, which is part of the UA's College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
He also contributed to everything from the Arizona Band Boosters to women's studies.
Manilla, who in the 1980s was president of Pima Community College, says Drachman also gave his immeasurable expertise to PCC in the late 1980s, when its bickering board led to the college being put on accreditation probation for a time.
"He was probably the leading force in getting a true professional interim board," says Manilla. "Everybody respected his knowledge. He was a person who could make things move."
That's still the case today, thanks to the Roy P. Drachman Foundation.
"Beneficiaries of the foundation include the Tucson Conquistadors, the Fox Tucson Theatre Foundation, Pima Air & Space Museum, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation," says grandson Boyd Drachman, one of the trustees of the foundation.
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