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When Booth\u2019s father, Gil, returned to Lone Elm from South Pacific duty in the Army Air Corps, Uncle Till\u2014\u201cMy dad was Gilbert Lee, one brother was Tillman Willis and the other was Wilbur Leroy,\u201d Booth says with a grin. \u201cI mean, we had some names!\u201d\u2014suggested Gil generate income with the family\u2019s new automated corn picker. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t sound like much,\u201d Booth says, \u201cbut there were very few, and they were very hard to get.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Booth\u2019s parents, Gilbert and Betty, grew up in Lone Elm during the Great Depression, \u201cwhen everybody was so poor.\u201d His paternal grandfather one year made $300. Booth\u2019s maternal grandparents ran a grocery and general store in Lone Elm\u2014the structure of which apparently still stands, long abandoned, at First and Main streets. The unincorporated town has allowed the block of decrepit commercial sites to remain, yet also features expansive lawns, unfussy but well-tended public green spaces, a charming community center and a rambling truck and tractor garage that broadcasts the proprietor\u2019s home phone number on a sun-bleached sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A search for work and schools drove the Booth family\u2019s move 15 miles north to Garnett. When Gilbert Booth landed a prime job as a distribution supervisor for the Kansas City Star, they jumped at the chance to move again, this time 50 miles farther north to Lawrence, where they could buy a house close enough to campus so that their three children\u2014Jane, David and Mark\u2014could attend KU without having to pay for room and board. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anybody,\u201d Booth recalls, \u201cand we were all intimidated, because Lawrence then was 40,000, versus the 3,000 where we had come from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Booth describes himself as a Forrest Gump character who has unwittingly found himself at the right place, surrounded by the right people, at successive stages in life. At the end of fall semester of his senior year at Lawrence High, Booth sat for a calculus exam that would have earned course credits at KU. \u201cThe sickest I\u2019ve ever been was the day I took that test, but there was no deferment. Now or never.\u201d Booth failed. Rather than blame the illness, he blamed himself. \u201cI had a lot of pride wrapped up in my math, and I vowed I would never take math again. This is where the miracle comes in, the fork in the road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the first day of spring semester, teacher Margaret McReynolds saw that her star pupil was no longer enrolled in advanced mathematics. She found Booth\u2019s class schedule in the office, then marched to his classroom, where Booth saw her speaking with the other teacher at the front of the room. When Booth was summoned to meet Mrs. McReynolds in the hallway, \u201cshe said how bad she felt and that she really wanted me back. I said OK, and it worked. It really worked. I passed that test, I ended up focusing on math and economics at KU, and I got an A in every math course I took.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Booth was 16 when he landed a part-time downtown job at Arensberg\u2019s Shoes, and discovered a classroom with no chalkboards. With the store swamped one Thursday evening\u2014then a traditional night for families from across the region to do their retail shopping on Mass Street\u2014owner Jack Arensberg sent the shy stock boy onto the sales floor to help a woman shop for heels. Neither employee nor customer knew who was more nervous, but Booth learned fast: Look people in the eye, listen before you speak, sell only what lets you like yourself when you go home. Commissions matter less than character. \u201cBe honest,\u201d he says. \u201cTreat people the way you want to be treated. At the end of the day, I wanted to feel good about myself. That was as important as any undergrad course.\u201d Eventually families showed up on Saturdays because the kid who fit their children\u2019s shoes told the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At KU, where he pledged Alpha Kappa Lambda and lived in the chapter house when finances allowed, the ever-curious, always-seeking Booth dreamed of majoring in every subject he studied. He did, however, recognize his talent in mathematics and earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in economics. Where that might take him, Booth had no idea, so he also completed admissions tests for postgraduate studies in law and business, then took a summer job as a systems programmer with Royal Dutch Shell in New Orleans, where he awaited word of a draft notice that would, in the very best possible scenario, yank him from academia and halt his career progress for at least two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, Booth received word that his draft deferment for higher education had been renewed. Problem was, he was no longer a student, so before the draft board could grasp its error, Booth hustled back to Lawrence to \u201cshop for degrees.\u201d Booth assumed he had only the one-year reprieve before the draft board changed its mind, so two years for a master\u2019s in business administration was out. In Summerfield Hall, business professor Wiley Mitchell, b\u201943, g\u201947, pulled down a thick binder, flipped pages, and discovered a path: operations research. \u201cTwo semesters and a summer,\u201d the associate dean told Booth. \u201cIt has something to do with math. You\u2019ll like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Booth applied on Thursday, was accepted Friday, and enrolled Monday. He taught computer labs while taking prerequisites, and discovered passions for teaching\u2014perhaps instilled in him by his mother, a longtime public school teacher\u2014and for finance and statistics. With the notion of earning a PhD that would allow him to both remain in school and one day join the KU economics faculty, Booth followed the advice of his finance and statistics professors and, after loading up his Valiant convertible, arrived at the University of Chicago. The fit was perfect; his reasoning, as he discovered before completing a doctorate, was not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI learned that teaching is not so much delivering a great lecture\u2014although that is what you want to do\u2014but also about getting the kids to want to learn,\u201d Booth says of the stint as a KU graduate teaching assistant that sparked his interest in becoming a professor. \u201cThat extends to business and sales. Instead of trying to push a product down somebody\u2019s throat, you have to help them learn more about what you do and let them figure it out for themselves. A valuable lesson. So, selling shoes and teaching prepared me for life, and, thanks to the academics, of course, KU prepared me for the PhD program at Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Chicago, Booth studied with Eugene Fama\u2014mentor, friend, future Nobel laureate\u2014and swam in a sea where financial economics was being written in real time. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a book,\u201d Booth says. \u201cIn class he\u2019d just hand out a new chapter of the one he was writing.\u201d The electricity was exhilarating, and also clarifying. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a professor,\u201d Booth realized. \u201cThis stuff was so important, and nobody was applying it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chicago gave Booth theory, but his Kansas home bestowed clarity: In the PhD program, he presented papers to giants and discovered that life at the top wasn\u2019t the life he wanted. The epiphany arrived during a Christmas meal in Bronson, south of Lone Elm, celebrated in his grandparents\u2019 home\u2014linoleum floors, no central heat or indoor plumbing, a table heavy with pies and laughter\u2014while he worried about the next seminar. Grasping that none of these people he loved and respected felt the first whiff of worry for the life-of-the-mind gibberish consuming him, Booth saw that his path was pointing out into the world, not deeper into academia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople think I\u2019m trying to say I had a disadvantaged upbringing. Just the opposite. I had a great upbringing. It\u2019s just, we didn\u2019t have a lot of money,\u201d Booth says. \u201cSo as we\u2019re sitting there, all the kids and grandkids running in and out and the pies and turkeys and everybody laughing and chuckling, I\u2019m standing there all stressed out. What\u2019s wrong with this picture? Don\u2019t they know I\u2019m in the PhD program at the University of Chicago, being mentored by future Nobel laureates?<\/em> And suddenly, I get it. It\u2019s just not me. I just want to be happy, and I\u2019m not happy. I have everything set up, the ducks are in a row rowing, I\u2019ve got Gene Fama as a mentor \u2026 and that\u2019s when I decided to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Booth craved\u2014he realized during his holiday surrounded by a personal tribe of industrious Kansans who valued community, loyalty, hard work\u2014was his own authentic path toward usefulness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLife is not about making a prediction and living as though it\u2019s true,\u201d Booth says. \u201cI mean, to an extent you can predict things or cut down on uncertainty, and you want to do that, for sure, but it\u2019s all about coming up with a sensible plan, given the trade-offs. You just do the best you can, be flexible, pay attention, adapt. If you do that, and you\u2019re focused on making quality decisions, pretty soon you realize, \u2018That\u2019s all I can do\u2014make quality decisions.\u2019 Once you accept that, then the next step is to say, \u2018Look, I\u2019m going to judge myself not by the outcomes, but by the quality of the decision.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Fama recalls Booth as \u201cthe best in his class. He was not just an ordinary student. He was very smart, very engaged, and very much into all the work he was doing for me and my classes and for what he was learning. He says everything he knows he learned at Booth\u2014the business school that now has his name on it.\u201d And yet, Fama did not resist his prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s instincts to bolt clear of academia\u2019s haven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fama, now hailed for championing the elegantly obvious yet world-changing \u201cefficient-market hypothesis,\u201d in 1971 recommended Booth to the financial data pioneer Mac McQuown, who hired Fama\u2019s Chicago superstar to come to San Francisco and join his Wells Fargo Bank team, what might now be described as a \u201cthink tank,\u201d then in its earliest stages of exploring real-world investing applications for index funds and testing Fama\u2019s theories about efficient markets. After completing research and algorithms that, among other claims to fame, helped Jack Bogle launch The Vanguard Group, Booth joined the investment bank AG Becker & Co., based in Chicago and New York City, where his most important client was AT&T.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike most of its peers, AT&T, then caretaker of the world\u2019s largest pension fund, was an early adopter of Fama\u2019s research that touted the wisdom of low-risk, low-fee portfolios based on rock-steady index funds. What confounded Booth was that AT&T also employed 110 stock-picking fund managers, none of whom were interested in the \u201csmall cap\u201d stocks of smaller companies\u2014meaning they\u2019d be selecting from the same equity pool used by Booth\u2019s S&P 500 index fund algorithm that already boasted steady annual gains of about 10%. AT&T\u2019s pension portfolio was competing against itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had set up the systems for them to run the S&P 500 in-house, so they had the technology in place,\u201d Booth recalls of his fortuitous interplay with his AT&T counterparts. \u201cSo I said, \u2018Instead of indexing the S&P 500, why don\u2019t we index the portfolios of smaller companies?\u2019 Finally they say, \u2018That\u2019s a heck of an idea,\u2019 so I set them up with that, and the idea went viral\u2014although we didn\u2019t say \u2018viral\u2019 in those days. Everybody thought, man, that is so cool, and I said, \u2018Well, if it\u2019s cool, maybe there\u2019s a business in it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearly a half-century after launching the now-iconic Dimensional Fund Advisors, Booth recalls that he, quite frankly, enjoyed his cushy job and paid vacations with the investment bank. \u201cI never wanted to have my own shop,\u201d he insists. But he saw another path emerging, hinting yet again at that destiny thing, so Booth and Chicago classmate Rex Sinquefield quit their jobs and, along with Professor Fama, co-founded Dimensional Fund Advisors in 1981. A spare bedroom in Booth\u2019s Brooklyn Heights apartment served as the first trading desk. They secured Vanguard to handle the back-office mechanics (\u201cA lot of clicking all the dividends and interest and calculating a net-asset value,\u201d Booth explains) and assembled an independent fund board that reads like a Nobel ledger\u2014Merton Miller, Myron Scholes\u2014and, of course, Fama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dimensional\u2019s early pitch, built around concepts that sounded impolite at certain three-martini Manhattan lunches, was stubbornly unromantic: Markets work, costs matter, diversify broadly, execute well, stay tax-aware, lean heavily into the small caps, don\u2019t pretend to predict the future. When applied with monastic discipline, the romance was in the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe DFA folks said, let\u2019s explore this in a systematic way by building well-diversified portfolios of small-cap stocks and trading very little,\u201d says KU\u2019s Gjergji Cici, Koch Professor in Business Economics. \u201cWatch the transaction costs. Charge lower fees. Be very mindful of tax consequences. Don\u2019t waste time picking individual stocks. And they were generating performance that was even better than the market. This was a win-win. Investors were paying lower fees and seeing performance better than most fund managers, and DFA was getting more clients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pitch wasn\u2019t sorcery. It was logic plus execution. Prospective clients were asked to stage their commitments\u2014small tranches, staggered in time\u2014so trust could earn interest. It did. Over four decades, Dimensional Fund Advisors\u2014now based in Austin, Texas, where Booth lives amid colorful, large-scale art that fills his house and grounds\u2014changed the industry by bridging academic theory with practice in a highly cost-efficient manner. Five scholars who advised the firm later won Nobel Prizes. The point wasn\u2019t stardust; it was method. \u201cYou can\u2019t predict the future,\u201d Booth likes to tell people. \u201cYou can design for it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Design, in his telling, has two halves: science and execution. Medicine has the same split. As do coaching, building a stadium, stewarding a university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walk into David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium today, and you can feel the argument it makes. The renovated west stands opened after a 20-month sprint, with chairbacks and cupholders across the new stadium footprint, world-class concourses, and the kind of ingress and egress that makes families exhale. \u201cNo bad seats,\u201d says Director of Athletics Travis Goff, c\u201903, j\u201903. University Architect Mark Reiske, a\u201986, calls it \u201cinstantly distinctive\u201d\u2014a place that reads Kansas even without its enormous midfield Jayhawk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phase 2 will mirror and extend: new east stands, to start, followed by a hotel, student housing, improved parking, an outdoor event plaza. The project is an engine for both campus and city, designed to hum all week, not just six Saturdays a year. Reiske hopes the lower east stands can be ready for the 2026 season, with the full east side completed by 2027. The hotel is, for now, targeted for 2027, and housing in 2028. It\u2019s not just a stadium; it\u2019s a neighborhood with a scoreboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Booth\u2019s gift is built the same way his firm is: a durable core paired with mechanisms that invite fiscal discipline. It includes a $75 million challenge to coax a community into the boat. \u201cNobody wants to be first,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes you have to stand up so others feel comfortable standing up too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coaches see the leverage. \u201cTwo years ago we were thinking, \u2018How do we get to where we want to go?\u2019\u201d recalls Hall of Fame coach Bill Self, now in his 23rd year leading the men\u2019s basketball program and nearly as long as the unofficial face of Kansas Athletics. \u201cNow there\u2019s a clear path. The responsibility of that gift is to make sure we work as hard as we ever have to bring other people into the mix, to make sure it\u2019s not a one-man, or one-family, gift. It\u2019s the tip of the spear on what should be a lot more, and I think that will be a driving component in how the athletic department looks at it.\u201d Football coach Lance Leipold, who flew to Austin soon after taking the KU job in spring 2021, says of Booth, \u201cHe\u2019s a quality man, obviously. Highly successful, very personable, very welcoming.\u201d Leipold appreciates that Booth\u2019s gift arrives with both runway and expectation. \u201cA gift like this gives us the opportunity to stay strong,\u201d Leipold says, \u201cbut we have to keep moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a thoughtful man who has spent a lifetime teaching what he sees as the truth about markets, Booth speaks in sentences that double as coaching points. We have about a century of quality stock market data, he notes\u2014Depression, world wars, financial crises, pandemics\u2014and across long stretches, stocks returned roughly 10% to 11%. The slick pros do not outguess the market with consistency, and it is impossible to predict before the fact who might. The miracle, if you\u2019re looking for one, is that capitalism can perform as such a superb information machine, a tabulator growing exponentially faster and smarter with every computational advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So invest the way the world actually works. Build sensible portfolios, capture the dimensions of compound return, be flexible, cut costs, tune out the noise, and judge yourself by the quality of decisions you can live with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Philanthropy, for Booth, is the same puzzle in a different box. You cannot forecast a campus to the second decimal place. Instead, you can build capacity. Align leadership. Put resources where they compound\u2014in people, in momentum, in places that become magnets. The stadium is a magnet. So is the idea of KU as a shared project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAthletics unites people who may not know anything about an academic department but feel deeply connected to KU,\u201d Booth says. He remembers his parents\u2019 season tickets as their annual social budget, and he deeply appreciates the strangers who stop him in Allen Fieldhouse or cheerfully interrupt his hotel breakfast the morning after the stadium\u2019s Aug. 23 debut. Oh my heavens! I think I just had the best fan experience of my life yesterday! Oh my goodness! Thank you for everything, I appreciate you, and here\u2019s to a great season! <\/em>Community isn\u2019t a metaphor for Booth. It\u2019s a room you can stand in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople have so much pride in KU\u2014the students, the alumni community, people like my parents who never went to KU but were really big KU fans, and you can see the impact it has on people\u2019s lives,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money or anything else. It\u2019s about taking inventory of how we\u2019ve been blessed. My parents, by moving to Lawrence, teed up the opportunity for me to go to KU, and I was proud to be able to do that. I\u2019m still proud that I went to KU, which enabled me to live life the way I wanted to live it. That\u2019s about as cool as it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ask him what has changed over the past decade, and Booth talks less about blueprints than about trust. Projects drift<\/em> for human reasons. Projects succeed<\/em> for human reasons, too. With belief in Chancellor Doug Girod, KU Endowment President Dan Martin, g\u201993, l\u201993, EdD\u201998, and Athletics\u2019 Goff, it was Booth who first proposed the $300 million gift, shortly after an April 23 Athletics summit at which he\u2019d agreed to provide a smaller, yet still impressive, gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFive days later or so, I\u2019m driving, and I get a call,\u201d Goff says. \u201cIt\u2019s David, and I will never, ever forget this. He says, \u2018So, Travis, I\u2019ve been thinking about this, and we can do one of two things.\u2019 He said, \u2018We can do what we previously talked about,\u2019 which was a brilliant gift that would have been a game-changer, \u2018or, here\u2019s this other concept.\u2019 I pull over, trying to scratch out notes, knowing a lot of this stuff is going to fly over my head. I said, \u2018David, I\u2019m not the smartest guy, but I think the second one sounds like the better plan.\u2019 He basically says, \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Listening happily as Goff recounts the $300 million gift\u2019s origin story, Booth smiles and nods. Yes, KU chose correctly. \u201cIt ties,\u201d Booth says, \u201cinto the confidence I have in the team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The metaphor he reaches for is compounding: small, disciplined inputs, repeated over time, that turn into a thing bigger than any single deposit. The most famous painting in the world traveled with its maker because Leonardo never declared his Mona Lisa finished; resolute stewardship is the art form behind all the other art forms. Stadiums, too, are carried forward by hands that keep showing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 78, the \u201cole shoe dog\u201d will tell you the calendar concentrates the mind. Estate planning nudged him to consider the difference between what you can do \u201cabove ground\u201d and what you leave to be sorted out when you\u2019re not around to enjoy it. But the bigger reason is strategic. KU is at a fork in the road, he says, and for the first time in a long while, the pieces align. Leadership. Momentum in football. A project that converts big talk into an address you can visit. That\u2019s when you push.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIdeas are cheap,\u201d Booth says. \u201cExecution is what\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jason Brown, Turner Construction\u2019s project executive, explains what \u201ctough\u201d looked like on the ground: an active campus; a tight site; just-in-time deliveries; multiple shifts; steel by day and precast by night; a workforce full of fans proud to build the place where their own families will cheer on the \u2019Hawks. University Architect Reiske proclaims that the stadium \u201cfinally gives our fan base what they\u2019ve been longing for, and deserving, for a long time: quality football in an appropriate venue.\u201d Says Booth, \u201cIt\u2019s a growth curve.\u201d Start, learn, add, steward, repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alumni culture isn\u2019t so different from investor behavior; people want to be part of something that works. Booth loves a small number with a big echo: If all alumni each gave $10, that\u2019s $4 million, and $100 is $40 million. But the point is less the amount than the habit. Make the small, disciplined input. Watch it add up. Feel the belonging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is the other truth about David Booth: Prestige never quite impressed him the way usefulness did. He is the student who loved every course. The kid who at 5-foot-1 was too small for varsity hoops yet found his way into basketball\u2019s orbit by slipping into the fieldhouse to watch the Jayhawks practice. The young teacher who valued helping students want to learn more than making them memorize. The salesman who learned to tell customers the truth even when the commission dangled. The portfolio manager in the spare bedroom who asked clients to test him a little at a time. The donor who says he\u2019s simply paying back the alma mater that launched him and asking others to do the same, at their own scale, for their own reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy parents gave back a lot,\u201d he says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have money, but they helped people. That\u2019s what philanthropy is.\u201d He still hears them in the voices that stop him to say thanks. He still hears Max on the radio. He still hears the inhale of a crowd ready to roar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when he walks into The Booth now, he sees the Boy Scout on the concourse and the grandfather smiling at pies in Bronson, the young man sneaking into the fieldhouse to shoot, the middle-aged founder managing a portfolio in a room too small for his ambitions, and the older man who knows that the long game isn\u2019t glamorous. It is consistent. And it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re not finished,\u201d he told a crowd at the stadium in August. \u201cWe\u2019re never finished. This is the launchpad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Call it a thesis. Call it a method. Call it the long game, the next first step. The life that taught an industry is still teaching his alma mater: Build with discipline, build with heart, and the good will compound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris Lazzarino, j\u201986, is associate editor of Crimson & Blue.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Get to know the Jayhawk behind the transformative investments in KU, from his Kansas roots to his trailblazing career in finance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,17],"tags":[39,38],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-giving","category-university","tag-athletics","tag-ku-football"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kualumni.org\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/New-football-stadium-KU.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kualumni.org\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/David-Booth-KU-football.jpg\")
From chalkboard to spare bedroom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStadium as thesis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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A philosophy of uncertainty<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The art part<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The man behind the name<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nPhotos courtesy of Kansas Athletics<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"