Quick Family Honors Friar With
$400,000 Endowment to SBU Athletics

By TIM GROSS
SBU ‘11


ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y.-- In 2009, Fr. Gerald McCaffrey, O.F.M., was inducted into the St. Bonaventure University Athletics Hall of Fame as a longtime moderator for athletics. Now his legacy will extend through a $400,000 endowment made in his name by the Leslie C. Quick III family. This is the third major endowment established by the Quick family. In 1999 the Martine-Keenan Endowment was established to fund faculty development and in 2007 the Clarkson Arts Education Endowment was established to support arts education programming at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.

The Fr. Gerald McCaffrey, O.F.M., Endowment for Athletics will be used to augment the men’s basketball program and help support St. Bonaventure’s 14 intercollegiate sports programs. It is the second-largest gift in SBU athletics history.

“We are grateful to Les Quick and his family for this incredibly generous and significant gift,” said Steve Watson, athletics director. “The endowment will benefit our whole athletics program and specifically the men’s basketball team, and provide opportunities not just for our current student-athletes but for all future Bonnies.”

Endowment gifts are invested by the university, with no more than 5 percent of the earnings from each endowment being awarded each fiscal year.

“On behalf of the entire men’s basketball program, I want to express our thanks to the Quick family,” men’s basketball coach Mark Schmidt said. “As we continue to build the program, this endowment will allow us to do some things that we otherwise may not have been able to do.”

Quick, a 1975 Bonaventure graduate, has served on the Board of Trustees for more than 20 years. He is the founding partner of Massey, Quick & Co., a wealth management firm in Morristown, N.J. Prior to his current position he held various executive positions at the Quick & Reilly Group, Inc., which in 1998 was acquired by Fleet Financial Group, and which was consequently acquired by Bank of America in 2004.

Quick and his wife, Eileen, and their family have been major benefactors to the university, including a gift to fund the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts in honor of his mother and other major gifts.

Most recently, Quick served as chair of the University’s 150th Anniversary Campaign, which successfully concluded this past year. He is now a member of the steering committee for the School of Business Campaign.

The endowment will serve as a lasting tribute to Fr. Gerald, a 1954 SBU graduate who celebrated 50 years in the priesthood in 2008; he now lives at St. Anthony’s Friary in Butler, N.J.

Nearly 30 of those years were spent at St. Bonaventure, where Fr. Gerald served as the university’s vice president of student affairs, athletic department chaplain, moderator of athletics, and math professor. He was for many student-athletes the Franciscan heart and face of the university.

“Our family wanted to make a gift that not only paid tribute to Fr. Gerald’s impact in my life, but also helped to insure that intercollegiate athletics continues to be a major part of the Bonaventure experience,” said Quick.

The Quick family hopes the endowment will challenge other alumni and friends of the University to support St. Bonaventure Athletics.

"I was totally surprised by this — and it's a wonderful surprise,” said Fr. Gerald. “I have known Les (Quick) for a long time and he's tremendous at everything he does. The Athletics program has really expanded over my time (at the University) and it's a big part of all the great things at St. Bonaventure. I think that we all may take Athletics for granted a little, and maybe our alums have not supported St. Bonaventure as well as we could, so I hope that this gift inspires people."

The Quick family’s continued dedication to the university, and Athletics in particular, astound those who benefit from their generous gifts.

“It’s really exciting to see the passion that Les Quick and his family have for St. Bonaventure,” Schmidt said. “And we’re incredibly grateful for that.”

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