Hollingsworth Family Gifts $788,000 to UT

The University of Tampa has received a $788,000 gift from the Max H. and Ivy M. Hollingsworth Charitable Remainder Trust.

The gift completes funding for the $1-million Max H. Hollingsworth Chair of American Enterprise at the University, and also funds the Max and Ivy Hollingsworth Project Development and Innovation Fund at a half-million dollars. The gift was made in memory of Max H. Hollingsworth, and his wife, Ivy, who both died this year.

Max Hollingsworth was an executive with the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain for 45 years. He retired in 1979, but continued a long-term relationship with the University.

His passion for education led him to help found the Berkley Preparatory School, which today boasts 1,200 students. For 20 years, he served as a University of Tampa trustee and the University was a major focus of his life after retirement.  

In 1984, he set up the Chair of American Enterprise.

“I would not have come to The University of Tampa at that time had the chair not been open," said President Ron Vaughn, who accepted the chair and moved to UT to teach marketing.

Hollingsworth and Vaughn established a warm personal and professional relationship that lasted until Max’s recent death.

Vaughn credits him with “literally helping to build” the College of Business at a time when seed money was scarce. Two of those programs included the Emerging Leaders and Executive-for-a-Day programs. He also supported a faculty teaching excellence and innovation program in the College of Business that has now been institutionalized across the University.

"It was Max’s support that got me interested. There was no marketing major available when I arrived, but by the next year, we had a marketing program in place, and in the third year, it was the second largest major at the University,” said Vaughn.

“Max, through the programs he helped build, has impacted the lives of students today,” he added.  “He had a sincere interest in the work of education.”

Among his contributions to UT, Hollingsworth served as a trustee from 1963 to 1984, was named a trustee emeritus, and served on the steering committee for the Center for Ethics and the Advisory Council for the College of Business.

Four years ago, he was awarded the Lifetime of Integrity and Service Award from UT’s Sykes College of Business, and was one of only a few former trustees honored as a trustee emeritus.

“The tie with dad, through the Chair of American Enterprise, is that a man with a can-do spirit could succeed. It is through free enterprise that the can-do spirit comes to fruition,” Holly O’Malley, Hollingsworth's daughter, said in announcing the gift.  “He hoped to pass that on, through education, to young people.”

Max and Ivy Hollingsworth are survived by Holly O'Malley, Jim Hollingsworth, a son, and grand-daughters, Brook Perdigon, and Ivy Gustafson.