The University of Kansas Health System has announced a $10 million gift from Cheryl Lockton Williams for construction of a patient tower at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City.

Part of the health system's $100 million Cambridge Tower campaign, the gift will support the construction of Cambridge Tower A, an eleven-floor facility with as many operating suites and the region's only interoperative MRI system. Ninety-two beds within the tower are expected to be ready in November, including twenty-eight ICU beds and sixty-four acute/telemetry beds, with an additional thirty-two scheduled to come online in the spring. The tower's fifth floor will be named the Jack and Cheryl Lockton Intensive Care Patient Unit in recognition of Lockton and her late husband, Jack, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2004.

Jack Lockton founded Kansas City-based Lockton Companies in 1966. After he was diagnosed with cancer, he and Cheryl developed cancerbattleplan.com, a website designed to help other patients facing a cancer diagnosis. The couple also funded a chair in pancreatic cancer research and provided funds for grant matching and targeted therapies at MD Anderson, and supported a pancreatic research program at Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.

"We are incredibly blessed to have Cheryl Lockton Williams as a supporter and friend of the University of Kansas Health System, and we are humbled by her generosity," said University of Kansas Health System president and CEO Bob Page. "Because of Cheryl's belief in our organization's mission and her gift to the future of academic medicine, thousands of patients who are the sickest of the sick will be able to receive the most advanced care in our new tower."

(Photo credit: University of Kansas Health System)