Lewiston native makes generous gift to Bates

Lewiston native Margaret Tardiff Crumley has made a $100,000 gift to Bates in memory of her husband Thomas D. Crumley ’52, President Donald W. Harward announced.

Crumley’s gift will match a National Endowment of the Arts Grant to enhance the teaching of languages at Bates as well as furnish and name the second floor computer classroom of the new academic building, scheduled for completion in the spring of 1999. The $18-million facility, prominently positioned on the Bates campus overlooking Lake Andrews, will provide classroom, laboratory and faculty space for seven social-science departments and four interdisciplinary programs. “Bates is grateful to help honor the memory of Thomas Crumley,” Harward said. A resident of Ormond Beach, Fla., Crumley said her husband, who passed away in 1997, had hoped to make a substantial gift to his alma mater. “That’s what he wanted to do,” she said. “He felt very good about Bates.”

Childhood friends, the Crumleys grew up in the same neighborhood on Sylvan Avenue and Orange Street and graduated from Lewiston High School. They married in 1945. With the support of his wife, Thomas Crumley worked his way through Bates College, working nights at the local radio station, WCOU. “We worked very hard for everything we had,” Mrs. Crumley remembered.

A World War II Navy veteran, Crumley graduated summa cum laude from Bates. In 1952, the couple moved to Ithaca, N.Y., where he took graduate courses in engineering at Cornell University and began his 33-year electronics career with General Electric. After working for several years with General Electric in Syracuse, the Crumleys transferred to Daytona Beach, Fla., where he worked as a project engineer on the Atlas ICBM guidance and Apollo checkout programs. Crumley also enjoyed amateur radio and teaching French.