When the Bill Moore Student Success Center was dedicated on campus in 1993, the man for whom it was named said, “When I first saw the building, tears came into my eyes.”

Moore’s $5 million contribution, which made the building possible, was at the time the single largest gift given to the Institute from a living alumnus.

After Moore’s death in 2004, his family, guided by his wife of 58 years, Desiree Moore, helped preserve his memory on campus through continuing his philanthropic work to improve athletics and student life.

Desiree “Des” Buchanan Moore, who lived in Woodside, Calif., and served as chair of Kelly-Moore Paint Co. Inc., died Sept. 14. She was 89.

Bill Moore, IM 38, attended Tech on a tennis scholarship. He took on countless odd jobs around campus as a student — including babysitting professors’ children, delivering mail to dormitories and working as a soda jerk at the Robbery — to cover living expenses and help pay for his younger sister’s college tuition.

But the student who struggled to make ends meet went on to co-found Kelly-Moore Paint Co., which eventually became the largest privately held company in the country. In addition to his philanthropic contributions, he also gave back to his alma mater through service on boards and committees over the years. In 1988, the campus’ tennis center was named for Moore, a member of the Georgia Tech Athletics Hall of Fame who as a star tennis player lost only one singles match in his collegiate career.

Upon the Student Success Center’s dedication, he said, “It’s a tremendous achievement for me to be associated with this at all. I feel like I owe Tech a lot, and this is the way I have been able to repay part of it. Without Tech I would not have had an education.”

It was during the closing days of World War II that Moore met his future wife. A Long Island native, she was working with the Red Cross in Honolulu. A naval officer stationed in the South Pacific on a destroyer, Moore was in Hawaii on shore leave.

In a 2009 article for the Athletic Association’s magazine, The Buzz, Mrs. Moore recalled how she first refused a friend’s offer to arrange her a date with the naval officer. But when she later met Moore at a dance, she was struck by how handsome he was. They had their first date over free ice cream and movies at the commissary. The couple were married July 18, 1946, and settled in California.

In the years following her husband’s death, Mrs. Moore created the William E. Moore Athletic Scholarship endowment at Georgia Tech and a support fund for the tennis center. And following Tech’s first NCAA championship win by the women’s tennis team in 2007, she and her children, daughter Chris McCall and son William Moore II, made a seven-figure gift to endow the Moore Family Scholarship Fund for women’s tennis.

Mrs. Moore later made gifts to fund expansion of the Bill Moore Tennis Center and new lighting for outdoor courts.

“It’s all because of Bill,” she told The Buzz. “Georgia Tech meant a great deal, and I want to continue in any way that I can.”

In recognition of her outstanding contributions to the Institute, Mrs. Moore was named an honorary alumna of Georgia Tech at the Alumni Association’s Gold & White Honors ceremony earlier this year.