Blanche E. Seaver

Blanche Ebert Seaver was the donor who made the biggest impact on Pepperdine's Malibu campus. The liberal arts college that opened there in September 1972 would later be named in honor of Blanche's husband Frank R. Seaver, whose fortune funded the construction of much of the campus.¹

Blanche was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants to Chicago.² She showed musical talent from a young age and would compose and arrange songs for the likes of John McCormack and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski.³ Blanche and Frank were married in 1916.³

Frank and Blanche were generous donors to educational causes in Southern California, including $7.5 million to Frank's alma mater of Pomona College, where the Seaver Science Center was named in their honor,⁴ and more than a million dollars to USC.⁵ Frank died in 1964,⁵ leaving half of his significant fortune to Blanche, and donating the rest.⁶

Frank Seaver's wealth came mostly from his Hydril company, which manufactured oilfield equipment, specializing in blowout preventers,⁷ which were used on oil rigs around the world.⁸ Seaver got his start in the oil business under Edward Doheny, one of the wealthiest men in the nation.⁷ It was Doheny's drilling company that Frank bought in 1928 and re-organized into the Hydril company.⁸

One of the recipients of Hydril stock following Frank's death was Pepperdine College.⁶ That donation launched a long association between Blanche and Pepperdine, which Blanche called "that little Christian college my beloved Frank cared about enough to remember in his will."⁶ Blanche's relationship with president William Banowsky resulted in her donating over $160 million to Pepperdine over several years,⁹ causing Banowsky to call her "perhaps the most important Malibu miracle personality."²

In Banowsky's memoir, he recalls first taking Blanche to the hillside in Malibu that would come to bear her name, where she declared, "I'm tired of scattering my money here and there. I want to focus on this place. I want to focus my contributions on something that will last for the ages."¹⁰

Seaver was not easy to court: she expected her companions to wear American flag pins on their lapels. She drank no alcohol, and her escorts were expected to abstain in her presence. She was involved in Republican politics, though she was an early Republican detractor of Richard Nixon (then of Gerald Ford when he pardoned Nixon).¹¹

Seaver was a devout Catholic for much of her life, though at the age of 86, she was baptized (by Banowsky) at the Inglewood Church of Christ.¹² She died at the age of 102 in 1994. Banowsky officiated at her service.¹³