Maine native No. 3 on philanthropy list

PORTLAND – A Biddeford native is No. 3 on a new list of the top American philanthropists.

Bernard Osher winds up behind investment wizard Warren Buffett and Osher’s own sister and her husband, Marion and Herbert Sandler, on the current Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list.

Osher, who has homes in California and Scarborough’s Pine Point, regularly makes Forbes magazine’s list of American billionaires.

Last year, Osher put $723 million into his private foundation, which has given away $227 million in the past three decades. Of the total, at least $24 million was donated in Maine, not counting Osher’s own personal giving.

Friends describe Osher, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year, as understated and reserved. He and his wife, Barbro, are among others who make major donations to Maine colleges and universities.

Osher, who made his fortune in the savings and loan industry, is reluctant do be interviewed. But people who know him say he is so modest about his philanthropy, even they don’t know much about it.

“He doesn’t talk about [it],” said his brother, Harold Osher of Portland, benefactor of the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine.

Students who met Osher in May 2005 at the Portland Museum of Art, where he attended a gathering of Osher scholarship recipients and their families, said he was completely unassuming.

“He was very humble and kind, not intimidating, and an easy person to approach,” said Ben Jenkins, a third-year student at the University of Maine School of Law, who grew up in Prospect and graduated from Bowdoin College.

Osher is the son of Russian and Polish immigrants who raised five children. His parents owned real estate and businesses in Biddeford, Saco and Old Orchard Beach. Although his father left school at 13, he considered education and giving a cornerstone to a good life, said Harold Osher.

Other major Maine education donors include Harold Alfond, the Dexter Shoe Co. founder who has spent millions on sports complexes and other buildings on Maine’s campuses; Wall Street investor Shelby Davis and his wife, Gale, of Northeast Harbor and Wyoming, who send about 1,000 foreign students to American colleges and universities each year; and the Davis Family Foundation, created by Halsey and Phyllis Davis of Shaw’s supermarkets.