The University of Texas at El Paso
|
|
The Prendergast family's participation in UTEP has always been more than as avid spectators. They have been one of the most consistently generous supporters of UTEP athletics year after year.
|
Tom and Mary Alice Prendergast's support for The University of Texas at El Paso's (UTEP) intercollegiate athletics program now spans six decades and figures prominently in Prendergast family lore.
"If you were dying in bed, you'd get up to go to the [UTEP] game. We didn't miss a thing," says Mary Alice, a 1956 graduate of Texas Western College (now UTEP). And according to daughter Laura Gordon, her mother is not speaking figuratively. "[My father] had open-heart surgery in October 2004, and attended a UTEP football game straight from the hospital." Football, basketball, home games and away games, and even sand-swept days at Kidd Field for track and field meets, the Prendergasts have always been among UTEP's most ardent fans.
So when Tom passed away in May 2007, it was fitting that his family and friends should endow a scholarship to support a student-athlete in the Prendergasts' beloved UTEP Miners' athletics program. Any new endowment is a show of confidence and an expression of hope for a university and the communities it serves. The Tom and Mary Alice Prendergast Endowed Scholarship will plant yet another seed of recognition for UTEP by providing the resources that establish the University as a leader in the ranks of intercollegiate athletic competition.
|
|
Tom and Mary Alice Prendergast
|
The Prendergast family's participation in UTEP has always been more than as avid spectators. They have been one of the most consistently generous supporters of UTEP athletics year after year. As such, the family has become as vital a partner in the UTEP athletics legacy as the athletes and coaches themselves.
In keeping with this partnership, Tom and Mary Alice early on made it a point of personal responsibility to help keep UTEP athletic facilities up to date. They were major supporters of efforts to get the Sun Bowl stadium built, and have contributed generously to the Larry K. Durham Sports Center and the FosteroStevens Basketball Center, as well as to UTEP athletics in general.
Tom's legacy in El Paso also extends to his enterprising leadership at two former apparel companies, Farah Manufacturing, which he took public in the late 1960s, and Billy the Kid Inc., which was one of the world's leading boy's apparel and women's jeans manufacturers in the 1970s. Before his death at age 73, Tom helped steer the boards of 17 publicly-traded companies. And as one of the founders of the El Paso Community College, and its board president for 13 years, he was as passionately committed to its goals as he was to UTEP's.
The Tom and Mary Alice Prendergast Endowed Scholarship is that inestimable sort of gift that keeps on giving. Reflecting on the endowment, Laura Gordon says that her family members have "always been strong believers in supporting the community, and we believe this is a very good way to support the community and our parents. We will continue to support it for the community and for them."
