Center renamed for May

The Springfield recreation center was formally dedicated to and renamed on Sunday. Friends of Edgar May donated close to $1 million toward the next phase of the Edgar May Health and Recreation Center.

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Center renamed for May

The Springfield recreation center on Sunday was formally dedicated to and renamed in honor of Edgar May.

SUSAN SMALLHEER / RUTLAND HERALD

By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER - Published: June 29, 2009

SPRINGFIELD — Friends of Edgar May put their money where their healthy heart was Sunday, and donated close to $1 million toward the next phase of the Edgar May Health and Recreation Center.

The center, which opened more than two years ago, was formally named in May's honor Sunday, who for years was the chief mover and fundraiser behind the creation of the regional recreation facility.

"It was Edgar's passion, it was Edgar's obsession," said his sister, former Vermont Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin, in her tribute to her older brother.

George Lamb, the Springfield lawyer who is chairman of the center's Board of Trustees, said May's perseverance and dedication were now legendary — or infamous.

"His version of the English language doesn't include 'no,'" Lamb said.

Donations totaling $910,000 were announced at Sunday's dedication ceremony. The single largest contribution, a $400,000 donation, came from a Springfield resident who wishes to remain anonymous and has already contributed to the health center, said Don Hinckley, co-chairman of the capital campaign for the center.

Other contributions came from the trustees of the center, who raised $285,000; and a new group, calling itself Friends of Edgar, which donated $225,000.

May, who turned 80 on Saturday, was feted Sunday with a dedication party in his honor in the pool area, complete with sushi, hors d'oeurves, champagne and a cake, decorated with the saying, 'I wish I May, I wish I might."

May has been the chief force behind the building of the regional recreation center, which was more than 10 years in the planning and fundraising stage before it opened its doors two years ago. The center now has 2,000 members from 35 different towns in Vermont and New Hampshire, and says 40 percent of its membership come from either the elderly or youth, a goal long held by May. The center boasts it has the lowest membership fees in the region, and offers scholarships and reduced rates to needy people thanks to a $3 million endowment, which came to Springfield from the state for hosting the new state prison in Springfield.

The new group. Friends of Edgar, headed by Barnard resident Lolo Sarnoff, a longtime family friend, announced a contribution of $225,000.

May, a native of Switzerland who came to this country in 1940 with his mother and sister fleeing the Nazis, first came to Springfield in the 1950s, as a cub reporter for the Bellows Falls Times and the Springfield Reporter, later returning in the 1970s after another career in the administration of President Kennedy.

Christian Craig, the executive director of The Edgar May, praised May, whom he said had "dedicated his whole life to fighting poverty" in all his different careers, starting in reporting, government service, as a legislator, and finally as a community activist.

The center will be known as "The Edgar May," and Craig said that the latest donations will be used toward the next phase of a $5 million to $7 million project, which will expand the existing fitness center and pool, to include additional fitness and recreation facilities.

The next phase is to build a galleria, which will add more space for the fitness center, and link the existing center with the Springfield Foundry building, which will eventually house facilities such as basketball courts, an indoor walking track and space for soccer, Craig and Hinckley said.

Kunin said that their family's arrival in New York City during World War II taught them that anything really is possible.

She attributed the lessons of a day in June 1940, when she, her older brother and their mother watched the Statue of Liberty come into view as inspiring both herself and her brother on their life's work.

After a journalism career that brought him a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, and a career in the Kennedy Administration, he returned to Vermont and got involved in politics, serving Springfield first in the Vermont House, and then representing Windsor County as a state senator.

Former Gov. Thomas Salmon of Rockingham, who said he was a member of the center, noted that May had accomplished much, thanks in part to practicing "the gentle art of compromise."

"To sum it up in a single Vermont sentence: You done good," Salmon said.

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