American University-owned WAMU(FM) in Washington has received what station executives say is the largest gift in the station’s 43-year history – a $250,000 bequest from the estate of the late Ellen Wadley Roper, a Washington journalist and communications professional.
David Taylor, acting executive director of WAMU, told RW Online, “It was a delightful surprise. We were pleased and grateful.”
Station executives are still deciding how to use the funds, he said.
After World War II, Mrs. Roper began a career in media and communications in Washington, which included stints at CBS News, WTOP(AM), the American Red Cross and Wilson-Wadley Enterprises, a public relations firm she founded. From 1958 until she retired in 1984, she worked at CBS News in Washington as a producer.
A one-time co-producer of television’s “Face the Nation” and radio programs “Washington Week,” “The Leading Question,” and “Capitol Cloakroom,” her production work also included
political conventions, presidential inaugurations, Congress, the State Department and special events such as the Kennedy funeral and the Watergate hearings.
Mrs. Roper met her husband, James E. Roper, in 1958, while both were working for the Washington bureau of CBS News. Mr. Roper died in 1998; Mrs. Roper died January 20, 2004, and is survived by the widow of her late brother, two nephews and a niece.
WAMU Receives $250,000 Gift
WAMU Receives $250,000 Gift
