Living on an Allowance
Almost from the day the Colonnade opened, those charged with on-the-job responsibility had in the main to address present financial problems rather than prospects and had to keep working vigorously with small resources to meet a budget that rose with success. It was a pay-as-you-go operation; and they, following Pauline footsteps, were vessels of faith in hope of charity for a job well-done. Besides, there was always NYU to rely on for something, year in and year out.
And then there wasn’t NYU. One day they saw that the quest which had built a national treasure had also diminished their own. It was a classic case case of doing better and feeling worse.
Endowment had been talked about, but no vigorous campaign undertaken to secure one. Most of the directors had been hired at good salaries; fund-raising had not been made a condition of office. Though all had the prestige and ability to attract money, they were seldom asked to get it. Being asked, they might have refused the job; and the university wanted, nay needed a good show-piece in front of the sculptures.
Only the great Robert Underwood Johnson had paid much attention to funding. In his book Your Hall of Fame he had written an open invitation to the world: “To be a founder of an endowment in the Hall of Fame would be a permanent and distinguished association second only to a tablet or bust in the Colonnade itself.” It would depend we suppose, on the size of the gift. Johnson, in any case, was too busy catching up or keeping up with work at hand to do more than worry about the distant future.
James M. Hester had become president of NYU in 1962, as undergraduates began warming up for boiling over. It was getting rather late for endowing America’s shrine. The last director of the Hall of Fame under NYU, Russell Niles, had had no better luck at foundations than his predecessors. Many foundations live by the biblical maxim, “Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.”
During the Heald incumbency at the Ford Foundation substantial gifts were made to NYU, but no Foundation grant for the Hall of Fame, and none since that we know of. We are left pondering it.