Major Gifts & Donors
Donations and Funding:
The H. J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports is being made possible through the generous donations of a number of private foundations and individuals. Although The University of Texas has provided the Center with 27,500 square feet of space, The University has not dedicated any additional funds to support the creation of the various internal exhibits or for the operating expenses of the Stark Center. The Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation of Orange, Texas helped us get this project on track with a 3.5 million dollar gift—without which UT would not have provided us with the space we needed—which is entirely dedicated to the Center’s construction. (Please see The Director’s Message for the full details of this critical gift as well as a short history of Lutcher Stark’s connections to both physical culture and sports.) We are deeply grateful to the Board of Directors of The Stark Foundation and especially to Foundation President, Walter Reidel, for their generous support of our vision.
Joe and Betty Weider Donate Second Million to Support Stark Center Exhibits; Valuable Artifacts, Sculptures, and Paintings also Pledged
UT's President Powers met with Joe and Betty Weider at the Weider corporate headquarters this past January to thank them for their support of the Stark Center.
Dateline: October 2008
Weider Gift and Museum Naming Officially Recognized:
UT Press Release (click on link.)
Dateline: July 2008
We are pleased to announce that bodybuilding legends Joe and Betty Weider, through the Joe Weider Foundation, have initiated a second million dollar gift to support the work of the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.
Earlier, in 2004, the Weider Foundation made a million dollar endowment pledge which was used to create the Joe Weider Physical Culture Fund in support of the Todd-McLean Physical Culture Collection. (The Stark Center had not been created at that time.) Endowments are gifts given to universities (or other non-profits) structured so that the gift amount is permanently invested and only the interest earned on the principal can be spent. This interest is then used for various needs—shipping, conservation materials, travel, salaries, and so on. Endowments are wonderful gifts because they mean that there will be funding in perpetuity for the project related to the endowment.
The Weider’s second million dollar gift is important in a different way, and is earmarked for the development of what we hope will be called, in their honor, The Joe and Betty Weider Museum of Physical Culture, which will reside inside the Stark Center. The Weider Museum will contain exhibits related to the history of athletic training, bodybuilding, weight training, cardiovascular conditioning, anti-aging, and other aspects of physical culture. We are also happy to announce that Joe and Betty Weider have also pledged a number of rare paintings, sculptures, and personal artifacts for display in the Joe and Betty Weider Museum of Physical Culture.
The naming of this large exhibit gallery in honor of Joe and Betty Weider is very fitting. Joe Weider is one of the most important figures in weight training and fitness in the 20th century. Beginning in 1940, Weider worked effectively to promote weight training and fitness in all its many forms. His magazine empire consisted of such titles as Muscle and Fitness, Shape, Men’s Fitness, and Flex; and he also founded multi-million dollar equipment and food supplement companies under the Weider brand. Co-founder, with his brother Ben, of the International Federation of Bodybuilders, Joe Weider is unquestionably the most important figure in the history of modern bodybuilding. Betty Weider, who began her career as a top fashion model, is recognized as one of America’s leading fitness and beauty icons. It was Betty Weider who provided the inspiration for the very successful women’s magazine, Shape, and in that magazine and other publications she has frequently contributed hundreds of articles on health, fitness, and beauty. Both Joe and Betty Weider have also published numerous books related to bodybuilding and fitness.
The Hoffman Family Foundation Gift
In 2006, Adelyn Hoffman and her son, Dr. Richard Hoffman, gave the Stark Center a 1600-volume collection of golf books that had been assembled by the late Edmund Hoffman, Mrs. Hoffman’s husband and Dr. Hoffman’s father. Both Edmund and Adelyn Hoffman graduated from UT and, in 2008 the Hoffman Family Foundation provided approximately $110,000 to the Stark Center. This gift will allow the Stark Center to hire for a period of three years an archivist whose primary responsibility will be to oversee the Edmund Hoffman Golf Collection and other books and artifacts related to that collection.
Terry and Jan Todd Provide $100,000 to Found Stark Center Book Series
Dateline: June 2008
Stark Center co-directors Terry and Jan Todd recently pledged $100,000 to create the Todd Physical Culture and Sports Book Series in conjunction with University of Texas Press. The aim of the endowment is to promote research and scholarship in areas related to the holdings of the Stark Center through the publication of both academic and popular books in the fields of physical culture and sports. Several manuscripts are under consideration for inclusion in the new series, and one manuscript has already been formally submitted to UT Press. The endowment will support the publication, in perpetuity, of as many as three books a year bearing the Todd Series/Stark Center imprint. For more information on the book series, including submission instructions, please open this link.
The Compact Shelving Project
Thanks to the generosity of the Southwest Solutions Group and Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Texas, we are currently installing approximately two linear miles of high-density compact shelving in our archival storage areas. The project will be finished in early-October. This state of the art system will dramatically enhance the operation of the Stark Center Library as we will, at last, have room to get everything unpacked.
Thanks to the generosity of our interior design team, The Lauck Group, and a law firm in Dallas, we installed a donated set of “high density compact shelves” in our work room during Phase One of construction to hold some of our books and magazines. High density shelving units are metal shelves, set on rails in the floor, which move apart at the push of a button or the turn of a mechanical handle. Because the shelves normally stand touching each other, twice as much material can be stored in the same space as with regular library shelving.
Late this summer, after unpacking our collection onto wooden shelves salvaged from various places in The University, we realized that our regular bookcases simply couldn’t hold all of our books and other materials. We needed more compact shelves. But they’re very expensive and we had no budget for them. So we contacted Troy Menchofer, a former student of ours who now runs the Southwest Solutions Office in Austin, and explained our situation. Troy, a serious weight trainer, told us that our timing could not have been better as Scott & White, a huge medical complex in central Texas, had digitized its medical records and no longer needed their eight linear miles (!) of high density shelving. Troy then contacted the hospital, donated $10,000 to Scott & White and convinced them to donate two miles of their almost-new shelving to us. So as we go to press, more than 11,000 linear feet of shelving is being installed. However, we’re still having to pay approximately $75,000 for the installation and the extra electrical outlets to power the units. Had we purchased these compact shelves, they would have cost approximately $400,000.
To read more about the installation of the shelves, read Terry Todd's Blog post from September 18th, 2009.
The National Strength and Conditioning Association—Our New Partners
The H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports is proud to announce that it has received a three-year commitment from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) to fund one of the Center's permanent exhibits and to stimulate research in the history of "strength coaching" as a profession. This joint project is aimed at a better understanding of the history of strength and conditioning for athletes and the role played by the NSCA in that process.
The NSCA's three-year, $51,000 donation will finance three Graduate Research Assistant positions dedicated to the development of both a museum exhibit and a "virtual history," which will be posted on the Stark Center website. The museum exhibit will be comprised of photographic, text, and artifact displays that explore the history of conditioning for sports from ancient times to the modern era. The story of the NSCA's formation; its influence in helping to establish a professional base for strength coaching and personal training; and the importance of the NSCA's journals, symposia, position papers, and research efforts will be situated within this framework.
The virtual or online exhibit will provide a more academically-oriented supplement to the museum exhibit, and will also contain a detailed history of strength training for athletics, with dozens of photographs, drawings, posters, and short video and film clips taken from interviews conducted with individuals who were pioneers in the development of the NSCA and those whose research and leadership have helped the NSCA grow into the most important professional organization of this type in the world.
In response to the NSCA's support, The Stark Center will provide appropriate space in the Weider Museum and other galleries for displays relating to the preparation of athletes; cover the expenses involved in the design and construction of the exhibits; and oversee an effort to locate interviewees, supervise the interview process, and coordinate the transcription of the interviews so that they can be made permanently available to researchers.
The National Strength and Conditioning Association is an international, nonprofit educational association founded in 1978. Evolving from an original membership of 76, the association now serves nearly 30,000 members in 52 countries. Drawing upon its vast network of members, the NSCA develops and presents research-based information regarding strength training, other conditioning practices, and injury prevention. The gift marks another step in the NSCA's long-standing commitment to bridging the gap between academic research and practical application.
Major Donors:
Roy J. McLean
Roy J. McLean Fellowship in Sport History
In 1983, when Terry and Jan Todd joined the faculty at UT and brought with them their extensive personal collection of books and materials (which included the Ottley Coulter Collection), retired UT physical education professor Roy J. McLean [see Director’s Message] decided to set up an endowment fund to help support the Todds in their dream of creating a public research library in this field. At that time, The University of Texas had a “matching program” in place and so Professor McLean’s $50,000 donation was matched by UT and became a $100,000 endowment. That donation created the Roy J. McLean Fellowship in Sport History, which—thanks to a subsequent gift from Professor McLean’s widow, Nelda McLean; a donation from Midland, Texas, oil executive, Doyle Hartman; and The University’s investment policies has now grown to over $700,000. Like the Weider Physical Culture Fund, only a portion of the interest earned on this account can be used each year, but it has been a very great help for 25 years. Roy J. McLean contributed in many ways to sports and fitness while teaching at The University of Texas. In 2007, Roy J. McLean was inducted into UT's Department of Kinesiology and Health Education's Hall of Honor (click on link to see more information) for his service.
The George F. Jowett Scholarship Fund
Following the death of George F. Jowett's daughter, Phyllis Jowett, we received word that she had left a $15,000 bequest in her will to create a scholarship in her father’s name. (Click here to read an article in Iron Game History concerning this gift.) Jowett is one of the founding fathers of North American weightlifting and one of the most prolific physical culture authors of the early twentieth century. The Jowett scholarship is used to support a student studying some aspect of fitness in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education here at The University of Texas at Austin.
