Q&A: FedEx founder, veteran Fred Smith offers unusual gift

Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, believes that if you've done well, you should give back to the public interest.

The 78-year-old Marine Corps veteran stepped down as FedEx's CEO last year, but remains its executive chairman. The billionaire rarely publicizes his and his family's philanthropic donations, but agreed to speak about a recently announced gift to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation that he and the foundation estimate could grow in value to $65 million over time.

“The thing that’s interested me are the institutions and the causes not the naming or the recognition,” Smith told The Associated Press.

The structure of the gift is unusual. Smith, who says he's “the biggest movie mogul nobody’s ever heard of,” financed the production of the film “ Devotion,” which tells the story of two Navy pilots in the Korean War. Jesse Brown, the first Black man to be a pilot in the Navy, and another naval aviator, Tom Hudner, flew together in a mission near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in 1950.

Brown died after landing his damaged plane, despite Hudner’s efforts to rescue him. The film is based on research conducted for a book of the same name.

In December, the foundation announced Smith donated the film's proceeds, in part, to endow a new scholarship fund, the Brown Hudner Navy Scholarship Foundation, for the children of Navy service members pursuing studies in STEM.

Shannon Razsadin, who leads the advocacy organization Military Family Advisory Network, said scholarships help change the future of a whole family. “When you’re struggling with things like food insecurity or figuring out a good place to live, when you’re moving on average every two and a half years, the idea of saving for college can seem really far off,” she said.

Smith’s family has long supported...