Perry and Seldenfleur make Historic Gift

"If you've already provided for the joy and comfort of your family, why not provide joys for others?"

With that rhetorical question, Ralph T. Perry '51 and his wife, Mary Louise Seldenfleur, made their historic $4.5-million gift to Bates last fall, the largest alumni gift ever.

"This is a magnificent gift," President Harward said. "It will not only make a tremendous difference to the College, but has also immediately raised the bar in terms of what philanthropic support can be achieved from Bates alumni and friends."

During the 1990s, Ralph Perry has donated more than $6.5 million to Bates to support endowment and capital projects. "I want Bates people to understand we have something that deserves to be preserved. And I hope that other Bates people, in their own way, will try to emulate what Mary Louise and I are doing."

The Perry-Seldenfleur gift is a planned gift in the form of a charitable remainder unitrust. Such a trust creates significant tax savings for the donor and also pays the donor an income for life, after which the funds transfer to Bates. During the lifetime of the donor, the value of the trust continues to increase for the future benefit of Bates. The Perry-Seldenfleur trust will be designated for endowment.

When it comes to Bates philanthropy, Perry's philosophy is straightforward. "If you have been fortunate enough to accumulate assets that enable you to live comfortably, I don't believe you have to have as an objective increasing those assets."

Instead, he suggests, find a way to benefit the world around you. For Perry and Seldenfleur, that means supporting Bates.

"Bates is a major institution in our country with major positive influences in many areas," Perry said. "To sustain and strengthen our College, the philanthropy of Bates alumni must play a fundamental role."

Perry's philanthropy includes a $1-million gift in 1995 in memory of his first wife, Joan Holmes Perry '51, who died in 1994. That memorial gift created the three-story, 8,000-square-foot Perry Atrium in the newly dedicated Pettengill Hall. Prior to her death, Joan and Ralph had made a $1-million gift in 1992 to endow a scholarship fund for Maine students at Bates.

Perry is a retired senior vice president of Hannaford Bros., the Maine-based supermarket retailer. In the mid-1960s, he joined with Hannaford Bros. to buy Progressive Distributors of Winthrop, Maine. Perry transformed the distributorship from a $1-million business with 10 employees in 1967 to a $75-million business with 200 employees in 1987.

When Perry retired, Progressive became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hannaford Bros., whose own CEO at the time was James L. Moody Jr. '53, chairman of the Bates Board of Trustees. In a nice bit of Bates serendipity, it was Moody - not only a former business colleague of Perry's, but also a onetime teammate on the Bates basketball squad - who announced the gift to the Trustees at their October meeting.

Perry noted that "our philanthropy is a Bates record, but we know that records are made to be broken. In our lifetime, Mary Louise and I hope what we have done for Bates will be exceeded many times."

(For more information on planned giving, check www.bates.edu/alumni/giving/Planned.html)

Rap artist Wyclef Jean, whose recordings with the Fugees include the multi platinum CD The Score, not only performed in the Gray Cage last fall, but he jammed with students in Assistant Professor of Music Linda Williams' class.

Secretary of Defense William Cohen LL.D. '89 and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who worked for Ed Muskie '36 when he was secretary of state, visited the Muskie Archives in October. Their visit included brief remarks and a question-and-answer session with students from James Richter's international diplomacy courses. In 1985, Albright gave Bates the Muskie portrait that hangs in the archives; in Washington, Albright chose to have Muskie's official portrait in her office.
Bates learned last fall that low-level radioactive materials (lower readings than what your average Maine granite outcropping emits), once used and stored in Carnegie Science for experiments and research, had been buried on College property after Carnegie renovations in 1987. A Portland engineering firm removed the waste.

The Bates College Republicans www.bates.edu/people/orgs/republicans/ celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, including a keynote event in the fall.

New Bates Overseers nominated from the alumni ballot last spring were Susan Doliner '81 of Cape Elizabeth and Joseph Matzkin '66 of Newton, Mass. Appointed as Overseers were David MacNaughton '73 of New York, N.Y.; Bates parents Ann Myer of Los Angeles, Calif., and Thomas A. Renyi of Wyckoff, N.J.; and Karen Harris '74 of South Portland.

Like most of the country, the Bates computer community experienced no Y2K effects, thanks to diligent Information Services efforts.

Only a third of U.S. students applying to medical schools are admitted, but 87 percent of Bates students and alumni who applied to medical, dental, and veterinary graduate schools in 1998-99 were accepted.

Children's advocate Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of The Children's Defense Fund, delivered the annual Bertha May Bell Andrews Memorial Lecture in Ethics and Education and spoke at length about the importance of mentors in a child's life. Her own mentor? The late Benjamin E. Mays '20, longtime president of Morehouse College.

Bates switched to process-chlorine-free (PCF) printer and copier paper in 1999. Bates will use 13,000 500-sheet reams of PCF paper in the coming fiscal year at a 6-percent increase in cost over chlorine-dioxide bleached paper, an industrial source of carcinogenic dioxin in rivers and lakes.
The Bates Seminar Series on Entrepreneurship www.bates.edu/career/BSSE welcomed a range of Bates entrepreneurs to campus over the fall and winter, and will continue in the spring. Talks came from folks like Jack Keigwin '54; Trustee and parent Ann M. Myer; Alumni Council president Jamie Merisotis '86; and Marty McIntyre '73.

A survey published in "The Best 331 Colleges" ranked Bates as 19th best dining services in the country. A Portland Press Herald writer, doing a story on Bates' high rating, visited Commons and wrote that his serving of rotini "was bursting with the flavors of egg and semolina wheat" and that his cream puff dessert was "magnificent."

Bates Trustee Ernest Ern '55 delivered the fall's Convocation address on the subject of college honor codes. Bates is pondering an honor code, and the University of Virginia, where Ern is senior vice president and university professor, has one of the strongest in the country. "Individuals can be honorable without a system, but only within a system can honor receive the daily attention and respect that it merits," he said.

Chinese expatriate artist Xu Bing, a "quintessential global figure," according to The New York Times, created a site-specific work at the Museum of Art, "Calligraphy for the People," in the fall.
Treasurer emeritus Norm Ross '22 and his wife, the late Marjorie Pillsbury Ross '23, lived at 32 Frye Street for 72 years, and Bates hospitality radiated from their home over the decades. On Jan. 15, the residence, now a student-run Bates coffeehouse known as the Ronj, was named for the Rosses in a simple ceremony attended by Norm, family members, and Bates friends.

For former Bates theater regular Greg Arata '96, all the world - or at least much of the U.S. - was indeed a stage this fall. In the persona of Bunker Bob, a shtick for the home furnishings Web site Homepoint.com, Arata traveled the country in a 70-foot glass house on wheels, ending his trip New Year's Eve in New Orleans, when Bob/Greg - ordained in the ministry thanks to another Web site - married a couple in the bunker.

The 2000 Phillips Faculty Fellows are Jane Costlow, associate professor of Russian; Sharon Kinsman, associate professor of biology; and Erica Rand, associate professor of art. The fellowships, part of the Phillips Endowment Program, created through the bequest of former Bates president Charles Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Phillips, enable fellows to travel, pursue scholarship, and interact with other leading scholars in their field.

Working with a team of astrophysicists while on a research leave from Bates, Alicia Soderberg '00 discovered nine new exploding stars, or supernovae, including the most distant one to date.

Soderberg gives kudos to her professors for helping her reach for the stars. "Professors here are concerned with your understanding of the material, not just their research. Eric (Wollman, professor of physics) and John (Rhodes, associate professor of mathematics) have been unbelievably supportive. They keep on top of their fields and help students find the best research opportunities."

The funny stories were told and retold about the late, legendary Bates track and field coach Walter Slovenski.

Like the time, during the gas crisis in 1973, he hid gas cans off the highway from Maine to Connecticut so his team could travel to a meet when gas stations were closed. Or how he made practices interesting in the old Cage by offering free ice cream to any runner who could predict his single-lap time to within a tenth of a second.

No one could. But how hard they tried. How hard they ran for Walt, ice cream or no.
"With all the great stories and images, it is easy to think that this is how Walt will be remembered," said one of his former runners, Steve Ryan '83, at the memorial service for Slovenski, who died Sept. 8 at age 79, four days after Bates named the indoor track at Merrill Gymnasium in his honor. "It is not how I will remember him," Ryan said.

Ryan remembers Slovenski this way.

"Walter Slovenski was simply the most energetic, positive, enthusiastic, and determined person that I have ever met in my life.

"Thankfully, he was not politically correct. He taught us to think for ourselves and to stick to our beliefs and principles. He taught the meaning and importance of loyalty, a trait that has become increasingly hard to find.

"With Walt, it simply mattered. He created a tradition and gave events a historical perspective. He fostered an environment in which you simply had to achieve to your potential or you would be letting yourself down. This is his great legacy: to have given us the best friends that we will ever know. To give me the only large group of people on the face of the earth with whom I can feel relaxed and comfortably, effortlessly, joyfully converse with until the lights are turned out or I'm dragged away.

"The day after Walt died, I had planned to leave for North Carolina's Outer Banks with three Bates track friends for an annual event. We drive in shifts all night, ride our bikes all day, fit a triathlon in the middle, and catch up on each others' lives. After briefly considering the cancellation of our trip, we unanimously agreed that Coach would approve of a good distance workout.

"On the last day, at the end of a hard 85-mile bike ride, racing the last 15, we stopped at this spot overlooking the Pamlico Sound to have our own simple memorial service for Walt. As Peter Weyand '83 began his tribute, the sun disappeared behind clouds on the horizon, then reappeared through a small hole in the clouds in way I have never seen before. As Pete neared his concluding words, the sun seemed not so much to set, but get smaller and dimmer, burning out as it dropped below the hole in the clouds. Just as Pete finished, the light ball faded away and disappeared. Just then, a beautiful sunset reflection appeared on the clouds high above the horizon.

"That is the way I will always remember Walt: As his own light faded, his light continues to be reflected by all those who came in contact with him and love him."

In a January op-ed in the Portland Press Herald, President Harward championed the Lewiston-Auburn region as he explained why the U.S. Postal Service should stick with its decision to designate Lewiston-Auburn as the site for a new $60 million distribution center. Harward decried the political pressure that resulted in the Postal Service announcing that it would reconsider Portland-area sites. He asked "those charged with the integrity of the process...to honor it and restore it."

The U.S. News &;World Report in December noted record early-admissions numbers posted by many elite colleges, including Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Rice, and Stanford. "At Bates College," wrote reporter David Marcus, "Admissions Dean Wylie Mitchell senses enormous pressure on students from parents and friends to secure a place in a good school." Bates' early-admissions applications were up 18 percent over last year.

When it needed a national expert on selective colleges that don't require standardized-test results, National Public Radio Boston affiliate WBUR called Bill Hiss '66, vice president for administrative affairs. During an extended drive-time interview, Hiss said that the College's extensive statistical analysis revealed that testing was "simply not predictive for a third to a quarter of our students." The Washington Post quoted Hiss on financial-aid policy changes at Bates and other selective schools that yield aid packages with lower loan and higher grant components, while The New York Times quoted Hiss on the relationships between college admissions officers and high school admissions counselors. "After a while you realize that certain counselors have great eyes for kids," Hiss told Times reporter Jacques Steinberg. And noted Times education columnist Glenn Altschuler quoted Hiss on the agonies of the college admissions essay.

Time magazine columnist Amy Dickinson quoted Kirk Read, associate professor of French, in her column on the emotional value of male friendships. Read, married and the father of two children, said, "I was looking for some male companionship that didn't involve guns, sports, or six-packs." He started a fiction-book club that meets monthly. "The books we read get us talking about being sons and fathers - about personal issues that otherwise wouldn't be expressed."
Senior Ben Shaw's leadership role in helping Maine's top research institutes secure a portion of the state's tobacco settlement funds appeared on About.com, a super-site portal, similar to Yahoo, that includes more than 600 targeted topical environments.

The Christian Science Monitor called Professor of Political Science Douglas Hodgkin last fall to offer reasons "Why the Republicans are Rooting for Al Gore." If the Democrats have a divisive nominating process, said Hodgkin, Bill Bradley's "freshness would wear off and you'd get increased negatives," with no great advantage to a Bradley or Gore candidacy.

An Associated Press story quoted Christopher Beam, director of the Muskie Archives, on the National Archives' public sale of cassette-tape copies of Richard Nixon's once-secret White House recordings. Tape purchasers should heed Beam, a former member of the National Archives team that catalogued Nixon's tapes and papers, who noted that "Nixon spoke in a low monotone, which makes him hard to understand."

© 2000 Bates College. All Rights Reserved. Last modified: 5/2/00 by Ngan Dinh