Annual Report

The Art of PhilanthropyWith a pledge of $360,000,Ronald Ansin ’96 hasestablished the RonaldM. Ansin Study AbroadFellows Fund. The fundsupports students enrolledin the College of Socialand Behavioral Sciences toparticipate in study-abroadprograms around the world.Russell W. Yarworth ’78, ’84MS, UMass Men’s SwimTeam head coach, remembers former team memberJames P. Robertson Jr. ’92 as “a reluctant student”but also as someone “who clearly had a gift as a peopleperson.” Robertson persevered in his studies and in the“grind-it-out” sport, as Yarworth calls it, and is now asuccessful Boston real estate developer. Robertson’s giftsof more than $60,000 to support the swim team representhis desire to help out a coach who once helped him.Robertson and his friend and classmate John L. Gardiner,Jr. ’90, says Yarworth, told him, “You’ve been doingfundraising for 30 years. Now it’s time for us to take it on.”Under Yarworth’s leadership, the men’s swimming anddiving team has won 10 Atlantic 10 titles, the most inleague history, and eight consecutive New Englandchampionships. Travel and equipment expenses arehigh for a winning team. Swimmers need more thanSpeedos: now de rigueur are full body suits, whichcost between $300 and $400 and wear out after abouttwo championship meets. Beyond covering thesecosts, Yarworth would like to increase the scholarshipendowment.Cultivating ConversationsLandscape professor emeritus Julius Fábos hasbeen writing his memoirs. Generations of hisfamily farmed in Hungary, tending their fields,vineyards, and orchards of pear, cherry, apple,and plum trees. Then came World War II, andthe postwar Communist government, whichimprisoned Fabos’s beloved father and sent theyoung Julius Fábos, then an agronomy student,first to a slave labor camp, then to work in acoal mine. Eventually he escaped to the UnitedStates, graduated from Harvard, and came toUMass Amherst.Fábos has been credited with no less thandefining, with Ian McHarg, “the field oflandscape assessment and planning.” Hepioneered the idea of the “greenway,” and during his years asdirector of the UMass Amherst graduate program in landscapearchitecture oversaw the studies of 100-plus graduate students.His expertise led to consulting work and from there, he says,“Real estate development became my hobby.”Having realized enough from those investmentsto provide for his family’s future, Fábos donatedsome of his property to UMass Amherst. “Howmany steaks can you eat in a day?” he asks wryly,then answers his own question: “None, if youwant to stay healthy.”The proceeds from the sale of the twocondominiums he has given will endow anexchange program between UMass Amherstand Corvinus University of Budapest. The JuliusGyula and Edith Fábos Endowment will build ona relationship between the landscape planningdepartments of both schools that Fábos has beenfostering for several years. As Fábos sees it, byendowing the fund, he is giving to his homelandand helping UMass Amherst’s landscapearchitecture department. Of his field, Fábossays, “Only good things come out of landscape architecture.”Through the fund, those committed to landscape architecturewill be “talking to each other, making connections, and makingfriendships”—all good things.112UMass Amherst • Fall 2008www.UMassAmherstMagazine.com113