Longtime employee of Kansas City Public Library bequeaths $1 million | The Kansas City Star

A woman who gave 44 years of service to the Kansas City Public Library bequeathed the library $1 million — the largest one-time gift from an individual in the library’s history.

Diane Swanson was director of the Plaza Branch for 15 years. She retired in 2002 and died in April 2014 at age 79.

The library will use the gift to create the Swanson Strategic Endowment Fund to “highlight the riches of our collections and spread the word in the community about the great services provided by the library, the kind of things that Diane Swanson did all of her career,” library Director Crosby Kemper III said in a statement.