Frank P. Smeal, the Wall Street executive whose $10 million donation in 1989 was the largest individual gift to Penn State at the time, died Tuesday after a lengthy illness at his home in Rumson, N.J., the university said. He was 84.

In 1990, the Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business Administration was named in honor of Smeal and his wife, who died in 1998.

The pair of 1942 graduates, who married the same year at the State College home of Mary Jean's parents, began giving to the university back in 1953, sending in $2.58 a year.

Their donations to Penn State eventually totaled more than $11 million.

"We will be indebted always to the vision and legacy of Frank Smeal, our benefactor and namesake," Dean Judy D. Olian said in a statement yesterday.

"Throughout his professional, community and personal life, he made lasting contributions to individuals and organizations in small and large ways," she said.

The Smeals also endowed a faculty chair in literary theory and established the annual Katey Lehman Creative Writing Awards in memory of Mrs. Smeal's sister, a former Daily Collegian reporter who wrote columns in the Centre Daily Times for 24 years with her husband, Ross.

After earning his bachelor's degree in economics, Smeal served for four years in the U.S. Army and then worked for more than three decades in the municipal bond market.

He rose to become executive vice president and treasurer of Morgan Guaranty Trust and was instrumental in counseling New York through its financial crises during the mid-1970s, according to a release yesterday from the business college.

For many years, Smeal served as chairman of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan civic watchdog agency for New York City and also the state.

In 1988, he donated $1 million to the commission, which was by far the largest grant that group had received since its founding in 1932.

Smeal finished his career as a limited partner at Goldman Sachs & Co.

During the college dedication ceremony in fall 1990, he said of his career, "Success is 90 percent hard work."

Smeal received Penn State's Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1974 and was named Alumni Fellow of the College of Liberal Arts in 1986.

The next year, Smeal was also honored as an Outstanding Alumnus by Penn State DuBois, which he attended for two years before coming to the main campus.

Smeal continued to remain active in the life of the business college, even after his illness kept him in a wheelchair.

Smeal appeared on campus as recently as April 2001 to witness the dedication of the Smeal College Trading Room.