Blog

Posted Mon, Jun 6, 2005

Update-Yale Bowl Renovation Fund

By Timothy Tumpane

Our efforts to capture a Portal for the Yale Ivy Championship Team of 1979 are nearing reality. Total donations now stand just above $187,000. This means that we are within $63,000 of the goal! This is terrific news. However, the job is not yet done. We need to close that last gap and get over the end line – before June 30th. To victory!

If you have memories of those special times at the bowl from Sept 1976 through November of 1979 and would like to contribute to restoring this historic treasure, you still can. The Class of 1980 enjoys a special relationship with the Yale Bowl. In this hallowed space, our senior team became Ivy Champs in 1979.

One of the true treasures in American sports, the historic Yale Bowl celebrated its 90th birthday in 2004. This magnificent facility, which opened on November 21, 1914, for the Yale-Harvard game, has been the site of 550 Bulldog football games. The Yale Bowl is an impressive structure that has the power to convey the best about Yale’s history of excellence in athletics. It is also a facility that must be upgraded if it is to meet the demands of current users, and future generations of Yale fans and players. Restoring the stadium will preserve what is great about the Bowl and about Yale – a sense of tradition and achievement.

The Ivy Football Champions of 1979 (class members of 1980, 1981 & 1982) are in the process of garnering funds for the naming of a Yale Bowl Entrance Portal for the 1979 Ivy Championship Team – our senior team. YOU CAN ASSIST in this effort!

Contributions to the Class of 1980’s 25th Reunion Fund may be directed towards a specific purpose, such as the Bowl Renovation. Donations of any size are welcome, but if you are able to make a more substantial contribution ($25,000 or more), you will be individually honored on a plaque, which will be placed on the Yale Bowl wall between portals 15 & 16.

This will be a contribution which will be visible for many years to came as the plaque over the portal will proclaim the contribution of Team ’79 and Friends for all the world to see and admire. You will be able to parade your children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors through that portal while beaming with pride that you helped preserve a Yale treasure.

Please consider the memories you treasure from Yale as we complete an historic 25th reunion class gift. We have already surpassed the previous record for a 25th Reunion Gift and we are striving to further surpass that goal. The Class of 1980 led the Ivy championship team in our senior year; I welcome everyone “onto the team” to help us cross the goal line once again, with gifts to create a Portal to represent the Ivy Championship Team & The Class of 1980. The clock is running out, though – only those gifts received by June 30th will count in our already-legendary 25th Reunion Gift.

Please direct any inquiries to Tim Tumpane via email Ttumpane@Kraft.com
Thanks, Tim