NAMES IN THE NEWS : Oprah Gift Aids Battered Women
INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. — A $20,000 donation from talk show host Oprah Winfrey will help open a new shelter for battered women.
The B. Robert Lewis House, a private agency headquartered in Eagan, will open its second shelter in an abandoned convent, director Mary Ajax said. The convent is being leased for 20 cents a year from church officials who wished to remain anonymous, she said.
The windfall came last November when Winfrey held a benefit performance in Minneapolis and offered to give half of the proceeds to the shelter.
Ajax said the donation was so large that it took several months for the shelter to find other sources to match it.
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