Looking Ahead, Honoring the Past

Whenever the DuRie family would visit the Granite State from their home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut — and especially on drives to UNH home games in Durham — John DuRie ’38 ’40G would roll down the windows and tell all the kids to breathe in deep the fresh New Hampshire air.

He loved it here.

And while it was never clear to John’s five children exactly how their father found his way to UNH from his high school in Rahway, New Jersey, one thing was very well known: John was deeply impacted by his time at UNH and shared his passion and joy with his children.

“The expectation that each would attend UNH was no surprise,” says son David ’81. “We had met his former classmates like Jere Chase ’36 and teammates Don Otis ’39 and Art Hanson ’38 (all three inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame) many times, and heard enough great stories and memories from our father that it seemed like the obvious choice.”

When David joined the UNH community in September 1977, his father told him, among other things, to smile and greet everyone he met, as he did when he was a student, recalls David, who majored in history while at UNH.

During his junior year, David studied abroad in Europe, where he met his future wife, Farifteh Sadrian. They returned together to Durham where she graduated with a political science degree in 1983. The pair, who note they learned a great deal from their liberal arts education, enjoyed successful careers in the years that followed. But they realize in hindsight that they missed out on the valuable hands-on skills that students learn through internships and other professional development. “Had we the work experience gained from a professional internship, our entry into the workforce might have been smoother,” says David.

When David learned about the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Internship Opportunity Fund and its objective to advocate for COLA students seeking and participating in high-quality internships, practicums, clinical placement or other pre-professional experiential learning opportunities, he felt strongly that he wanted to support it.

So, with that belief, David made the decision to expand his small annual donations to UNH Athletics, Northeast Passage and a family scholarship that had been established earlier by sister Susan Pepin ’76 (currently a member of the UNH Foundation Board and the College of Health and Human Services Advisory Board). He created a planned gift so that a portion of his estate will go to the Internship Opportunity Fund.

“I wholly endorse a liberal arts education; it has improved my perspective of complicated world events and given me a greater appreciation of the different cultures and communities that make up the United States,” says David.

With this latest gift, David knows that the value of future students’ liberal arts education will be enhanced by professional internship opportunities.

The planned gift is also a fitting tribute to his father’s lifelong love and support of UNH.

“I believe my father, as a coach and mentor, would have been pleased with this effort to assist UNH students with their professional endeavors,” he says.