It’s the academic final stretch. Students are now both preparing for final exams and looking for ways to pay for their education. One way to help students cope are scholarship funds.

Thousands of Maine benefactors have made a big difference. Here’s a look at one of them and the fate of the fortune he left behind.

“Shot self with rifle,” was how Maine’s Chief Medical Examiner Henry Ryan described Lawrence Standish’s killing. It was just after 8 a.m. on an overcast, cold Friday morning, the last day of November in 1990 when the 71-year old Standish took his own life. Standish did this by pulling the trigger on a rifle pointed at his head in the parking lot a few hundred yards from the downtown Augusta exit of Interstate 95. This was outside the modest apartment building he lived in on a short dead end street just off a busy section of Western Avenue in Augusta.

It was a sensational end to what had, for the most part, been a quiet, solitary life. His attorney John Wlodkowski described the never-married and childless Standish as “shy” “ reticent” and “lonely.” His only sibling, an older sister, was no longer living. The whereabouts of his next of kin, a nephew, were according to probate papers, “unknown.”

Perhaps more shocking than Standish’s violent death, however, were the terms of his will and the largesse which the settlement of his estate soon revealed: a trust which by 2007 had grown to nearly a $1 million. This he directed to provide scholarships for University of Maine at Farmington seniors. It was at the time, one of the largest funds ever afforded to UMF students.

To be eligible, seniors chosen by UMF’s scholarship committee, must have a “keen desire to further their education by pursuing a Master’s Degree from the University of Maine at Orono, Maine and who have received full acceptance and admission to said Master’s Degree program.”

Since the trust fund first became available to UMF in 1994 it has experienced a significant dilemma, however: a shortage of qualified students seeking the award. No awards were made last year and two years ago, for example, less than $8,000 of the fund’s annual $56,000 revenue that year was turned over to a single student. Six years ago, with an annual income of over $95,000 no awards were made. The year before that: $56,000 in revenues and no scholarships whatsoever.

To be sure, this is not UMF’s fault. Moreover, the fund’s manager, KeyBank, has prudently invested Standish’s money so that it has only taken a light beating in the last two recessions. A fund worth $400,000 when turned over by Standish’s estate soared to $926,000 by 2007 and is still, despite the economic downturn,  valued at $834,734, even though much of the growth stems from spending so little of the income.

A sticking point in obtaining a sufficient number of qualified applicants, according to UMF Administrative VP Laurie Gardner,  was Standish’s restriction that eligibility was  restricted to UMF students planning to immediately matriculate at Orono.  Seniors typically seek a gap year or two before going on to seek graduate degrees. Such a time-out renders them ineligible.  

Nevertheless, the Standish fund, despite its inability to find beneficiaries for most of the income has in the last l8 years provided some l5 to 20 UMF seniors almost $400,000  to have an all expense paid masters degree at Orono. Hopefully, more will awaken to the opportunity that Standish’s will so generously made possible. If they don’t, one hopes  that KeyBank will seek to broaden the eligibility requirements. This they did at an early point not long after Standish’s death and hopefully will do so again if not enough eligible students apply.

Standish’s desire to reward students in Maine higher education  stemmed no doubt from his early life experiences. Born and raised in Stratton, Standish described his father as a “laborer.”   President two years of the Stratton High dramatics club, but also a member of both the basketball and baseball teams, Standish graduated from Stratton High in 1936, shortly after his mother’s death.  He entered the three-year program at UMF, then called Farmington State Normal School, that fall, graduating in 1939.  (A four year program  wasn’t generally available at Farmington until 1945.)

A route Farmington State graduates then often traveled – spending the next year to earn a bachelors degree at Orono – was closed off to Standish by the need to go out and make a living.

This Standish did by a teaching job at Cranberry Isles, population: 334,  three miles off Mt. Desert Island.  Service in  World War II followed, but soon after, Standish was finally able to afford Orono and by 1947 had earned both a bachelors and masters degree there. The financial challenges of accomplishing this no doubt informed Standish’s desire to make the Farmington to Orono transition an easier one than it was for him.  

Standish pursued further graduate studies at Columbia Teachers College from 1950 to l955 but due to an apparent dispute over language in his thesis his advisors felt overly critical of educators was not awarded a degree.  

The next few years of Standish’s career is something of a mystery, but at some point he became a contract negotiator for private companies dealing with the Defense Department.

By the 1970s Standish was back in Maine. A rare public moment for Standish occurred  when in 1976 he took the lead in proving that some of Canal Bank’s passbook accounts were paying a lower rate of interest than the bank advertised.  Standish’s objections gave rise to a rebate award to 1,483 customers.

In his final years, Standish became somewhat reclusive and amassed not only a substantial financial estate but also a collection of thousands of jazz phonographic recordings, which his will donated to the University of Maine at Augusta’s Learning Resources Center.

 His greatest legacy, however, remains the fund that bears his name and which, hopefully, can someday be more fully realized for the purposes he intended.