MELBOURNE, FLA. — Florida Tech is proud to announce that the Denius Family Foundation has donated $40,000 to the university’s Boundless Opportunity Program, which helps make a Florida Tech education attainable for high-achieving students in Brevard, Indian River, Osceola and Volusia counties who have unmet financial needs.
This is the latest in a series of generous, impactful gifts from the Denius family to Florida Tech that ripples well beyond campus.
It started in 1949 when Homer Denius and his family moved to Brevard County. He was a visionary electrical engineer who knew before most that telemetry – the process of collecting, measuring and transmitting data from a remote location to a central one – would be essential to the space and rocket industry that was emerging not far from his new home in Melbourne.
Denius and his friend and colleague George Shaw – a major benefactor in his own right who would chair the first board of trustees at Brevard Engineering College, later renamed Florida Institute of Technology – had discussed the need for telemetry equipment when they worked together in Northern Virginia. Ultimately, the company they founded, Radiation Inc., would be established in a rented building at Melbourne airport in 1950.
That decision was critical to Florida Tech’s success.
So it was that a year after he launched the Denius Family Foundation to support Florida Tech founding president Jerry Keuper and his nascent Brevard Engineering College (BEC), Denius donated 1,000 shares of the company to finance the construction of the college’s first buildings on Country Club Road.
His colleagues at Radiation, including Shaw and Joe Boyd, were also supporters, and the relationship between business and university grew and deepened as Radiation merged with Harris Corp.
In 1964, BEC awarded both Denius and the pioneering rocket scientist Werner von Braun honorary degrees in space science. Also that year, the Denius Family Foundation established a $50,000 matching grant to the college.
Without Homer Denius’s support in those early days, the university’s future was certainly murkier. Sandra Denius Keeley, Homer Denius’s daughter and president of the small Denius Family Foundation, said, “My father never really talked about his bachelor’s degree, but he obviously valued it and made sure his three kids went to university.” She added that the elder Denius was “…generous with whatever he could make and hand out to other groups.
“I just thought, well, especially now when we are seeing this big division in our country between education and no education – and a lot of people are not getting education because they never had the means or support to do it – that this was a small way to try to help remedy that,” Keeley said.
In 1966, Denius was named chair of the BEC board of trustees. Two years later, the Denius Student Union opened on campus, a powerful reminder for the campus community of the Denius family legacy that remains a key facet in spreading the power of education.
“Simply put, Florida Tech’s growth from Brevard Engineering College into one of the nation’s premier technological universities does not happen without Homer Denius and his family,” said Florida Tech President John Nicklow. “Their generosity 60 years ago was crucial to our success today, and the Denius Family Foundation’s gift now empowers us to change the lives of more young men and women right here in our own community. Thank you!”
