Office of the University Chancellor

To Shelley and the whole McKinney family, Laurie and I add our most sincere and heartfelt condolences. We are sure the depth of your grief and mourning is profound.

Robert H. McKinney was a member of that Greatest Generation of Americans – the generation who stepped forth from the new world, as Churchill put it, to the rescue of the old.

Soon after his service finished when former allies in the great war against fascism, just ended, became foes during the Korean War, he returned to the colors without hesitation to serve once again.

His service on these occasions opened his eyes to humanity in all its diversity; how all peoples shared the same needs, fears, and joys. It made him, for the rest of his life, an ardent and passionate internationalist who realized that the security and prosperity of this country rested on embracing and engaging with the world, not shunning it or cutting it off. His commitment to this belief was so visceral that it extended to his own philanthropic support for farsighted programs of international engagement at the Naval Academy.

Others have spoken of his remarkable service to the governance of the nation, of Indiana, and of Indianapolis under presidents, governors, and mayors of both parties. Though a lifelong Democrat he understood that this country was at its best when it drew from all its most able and talented, no matter what their party.

He was an outstanding entrepreneur and a consummate and effective businessman who built banks, companies, and law firms. And like in his government service, he managed these large and complex organizations with the greatest success – organizations that were always in the public eye, and in constantly changing and challenging fiscal and technological environments.

But it was in his devotion and service to Indiana University that I knew him best and for which I will try, however inadequately, to honor him. I first knew him in his third and last three-year term as a trustee of Indiana University, a position to which he had been appointed by Governor Bayh. Because of his extensive business and government experience, he understood at this early time when few shared this vision, that information technology would become of the greatest importance to universities, and should be brought to the center of their councils through an office reporting directly to the president. He made this case to then-president Myles Brand, who shared his vision, and I was privileged to be appointed to this position.

Consequently, Bob took a great deal of interest in what I was doing, and I was able to closely interact with him. He was one of the most able trustees under whom I served in nearly 30 years at IU. He understood deeply that trustees of Indiana University had a fiduciary responsibility of the utmost importance to the state in that they held the university and all its assets and its reputation in trust for the people of Indiana.

To this most serious of tasks, he brought his vast and varied business and government managerial and organizational experience, his broad knowledge of higher education, his independence of judgement, and his critical and questioning intellect. His experience was of a kind appropriate for a trustee of a university whose size, scale, and complexity made it one of the country’s largest.

Bob was that rarest of IU graduates who was a product of both law schools at IU, having begun his legal studies in Indianapolis but having completed them in Bloomington. His rise through the legal profession was meteoric and his accomplishments were widely acknowledged.

In early 2011 Bob expressed interest in making a gift to IU that would have a major impact. Over that year, Gene Tempel and I explored various ideas with him. But eventually we agreed that he could have the greatest impact by a gift of exceptional size to the IU law school at Indianapolis that would fund a major increase in endowed professorships and student scholarships and so raise the standing and profile of the school.

And it has proven to be, as I said at the time, a gift that has had a pervasive and “transformative effect on teaching and research” in the school and on its standing. In recognition of this extraordinarily generous gift, the school was subsequently named in his honor in perpetuity.

To attempt to summarize even this small part of a life so rich, varied, and long is a near impossible task. There is so much more that can be said about his remarkable contributions and generosity in dozens of other areas, and about his integrity, decency, and plain common sense.

But if one was to reflect on all Robert McKinney accomplished in nearly 100 years and asked the question, as did the Greeks, “What is the essence of life?” we should answer, as they did, “To serve others and to do good.”