Hays ? Not many people attending their 65th reunion at Thomas More Prep-Marian High School could remember much about their late classmate Martin E. Mullen Jr.

But Mullen remembered the northwest Kansas school in a big way, with a $2.6 million gift announced Friday from his estate to the school’s endowment foundation. It’s the largest single gift to the Catholic institution in Hays.

TMP-Marian was known as St. Joseph College and Military Academy when Mullen attended from 1943 until he graduated in 1945. He was from Pennsylvania, and a friend told The Hays Daily News that Mullen’s father thought the military experience would be good for him.

Mullen went on to serve in the Army and to teach high school English in California. He never had children, and died in June 2008.