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Libbey has big heart

Dennis Libbey. The Best.

When I read the article on Dennis Libbey (BDN, April 27), I cried. The last time I saw Dennis was at his brother’s funeral.

The one who told me about his tumor was his sister-in-law. The tumor might have weighed six pounds, but Denny’s heart weighed 10 times that like his brother Kenny who passed away a few years ago.

Dennis is cut from the same cloth. Not only good ballplayers, but good people, and I don’t want to forget his brother, June. Not just an old teammate, but an old friend.

Jerry Hallett

Howland

Support UM programs

I am writing out of concern that the University of Maine is considering cutting sports from the athletic department.

I graduated from Maine in 1988 and was a four-year member of the swim team. I grew up in Bar Harbor and swam for the local YMCA. During my sophomore year at UMaine, my mother died of breast cancer. Although UMaine didn’t offer the academic program that I wanted (physical therapy), I went to Maine to be closer to her while she was sick.

Her death was very difficult, and I don’t think that I would have remained in school if it weren’t for the swim program. College can be a lonely place, and swimming kept me on task and in school.

I feel that the university has an obligation to maintain the variety of sports within its department. Without the UMaine swim program at Orono, there would have been no place else for me to swim in the UMaine system and to go to college out of state would take me very far away from my mother in her last year of life.

Please, let’s support the programs that support Maine’s youth.

Amy Allen Sussman, Class of ’88

Eldersburg, Md.

Cuts could sting donors

I believe it would be a serious breach of faith for the University of Maine to cut the swimming and diving program.

In the early 1990s, the athletic department indicated it was going to cut the program. A group of us got together at my home on a regular basis (weekly) and faced the many issues relevant to maintaining the program. In our deliberations we realized that money was tight, so we embarked on a course of creating an endowment. We established a statement of what the endowment was established for and set it up at the University of Maine Foundation. Back then the trustees of the University of Maine System passed on the terms of the endowment, or accepted it formally, and we went forth and raised money for the endowment. We approached in person many donors, including Stephen and Tabitha King, who were very supportive, and told these donors what the needs were and what we were doing. I know of no other sport at the university which has gone about creating such an endowment in the manner in which we did it.

In December of 2000, the endowment was more than $350,000, part of the earnings of which go to support swimming and diving at the university. The earnings which do not go to the university go back into the fund to increase the principal in the endowment. Our collective feeling was that it is a wiser expenditure of time and effort to create an endowment which preserves what the donors give as principal and permits, annually, monies to flow to the university in the form of earnings on that principal.

The University of Maine Foundation has been an exemplary partner in handling the monies and sending money regularly to the university athletic department for the program for which the endowment was created. The present amount of principal in the endowment is a function of what the stock market has been doing over the last two years. The University of Maine Foundation management has consistently done a fine job with that fund.

Our group met again on April 30.

It is the view of this writer that if the swimming and diving program is cut, the assurances and commitments we received several years ago from the University of Maine administration, not the present administration personnel, for sure, and which we used in good faith to convince many good people to contribute to the endowment fund, will be broken.

I do not see that any person can then, the week after the program is cut, sit down with any potential donor and credibly say on behalf of the University of Maine (for any department) that even the creation of an endowment accepted by the trustees will give permanent life to any given program.

I would like to think that all external fund-raising efforts by the university will be suspect based on this experience if the cutting of the program now occurs.

Garth K. Chandler,

Bangor

Jacklin deserves to play

I recently had the opportunity to caddie for golf’s Hall of Fame inductee, Tony Jacklin, at the Legends Tournament. I must tell you what a positive attitude he made on me, other pros, and the gallery. He has a wonderful disposition and incredible class, all while still being a great striker of the ball. Tony was very pleasant to the golf fans, taking time to speak with them and signing autographs for all that requested.

The Senior Tour would do well to have Tony play some events on sponsor exemptions. Remember, this man is one of golf’s greatest players. He is to Europe what Nicklaus and Palmer are to the U.S. I was shocked to hear that the Senior Tour has overlooked such a fine gentleman and crowd pleaser such as Tony Jacklin.

Dennis R. Grasso

Livermore Falls