Orono library benefactor dies at 98

ORONO – A longtime professor at the University of Maine and benefactor to Orono Public Library was remembered Monday for her endless commitment to the education of young people.

Katherine Miles Durst, 98, had been a member of the UM faculty in child development from 1945 until her retirement in 1969.

Durst, who was past 80 when she married Richard Durst, also a UM professor, had no children of her own, said Alice Smith, member of the Orono Public Library trustees.

“But she was a force for youth,” Smith emphasized.

A native of Ohio with degrees from Ohio State University and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota, Kay Durst was the only woman to be a major participant in an educational study of team teaching funded by the Ford Foundation.

“She’s had such an interesting life. I’m amazed we were so fortunate to have her in our midst,” Smith said.

The number of people who came under the professor’s influence at the preschool at UM’s Merrill Hall is extensive, Smith said.

Then, too, “she was the initiator of a preschool at the Orono United Methodist Church. She wanted a nondenominational preschool that would be open to all,” Smith said.

Durst also gave a helping hand financially to a number of young people attending college and provided a home for foreign students wanting to study at the university.

She gave quietly to her alma maters and to the University of Maine, as well as to a fund for an elevator at the Methodist church.

But Durst agreed to allow the trustees of Orono Public Library to publicize her donations of cash and stocks worth $200,000 in hopes that others would contribute to the effort to build a new facility. Currently, the library shares quarters at Orono High School.

“The library was one of her dreams,” Smith said. She recalled Durst telling her how when she came to the university in the 1940s, the town library was then in small quarters in the basement of what is now the Keith Anderson Community Building.

Durst made a first donation of $100,000 and then a second contribution in the same amount to help construct a new home for the town library – a project yet to be realized.

“But it has started a little momentum even before there’s a fund drive. She feels it will leave something in the future,” Smith explained, adding Durst especially wanted her gift to benefit the children’s department of the library.

“People like this are the strength of our nation,” Smith said, “the backbone that helps to hold the good values. Libraries are just a crucial part of our cultural needs – food for the soul and the mind.”

Smith will recall her friend, too, as someone who always had a special connection to children, a feeling they returned in her presence.

She told of Durst’s visit a few years ago to the Page Farm and Home Museum at the university, and how children touring the facility crowded around her.

“It was a cherished little time with her,” Smith said.

Survivors include several nieces and nephews, two stepchildren and their families.

Memorial services will be held in the spring. Gifts in Durst’s memory may be sent to the University of Maine Foundation for the Katherine Miles Durst Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 2220, Bangor 04402.