This is the largest outright gift from a living alumnus in the College’s history.

Commercial real estate developer Leroy M. Merritt and 1952 graduate of Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) has pledged a $5 million challenge gift to McDaniel’s $65 million comprehensive campaign. His gift exceeds a $2 million gift he made in 2006 to construct a new lifetime fitness center dedicated and named in his honor November 10. This additional $5 million gift will match dollar to dollar new gifts and pledges received to fund renovations to student residence halls and athletic facilities.

“It truly is an exciting moment in the college’s 140-year history and Leroy’s gift will surely inspire others to give,” said McDaniel President Joan Develin Coley. “Already the Merritt Fitness Center plays a key role in our mission to provide a lively learning environment that sparks students’ thinking, questioning, and imagining. The College looks forward to raising $5 million in gifts for campus facility improvements in order to meet the Merritt Challenge.

“Leroy’s gift is vital to our vision of a campus brimming with life-changing opportunities and promotes learning that extends beyond the classroom. It also furthers our long-standing tradition of life-long friendships forged on the Hill – a tradition that certainly Leroy knows firsthand.”

In the post-war days of 1948, a 17-year-old Leroy Merritt from Dundalk, Md., arrived on the hilltop campus. An economics major, Merritt always had spending money as an undergraduate thanks to the business he and the late Jack Molesworth ’52, M.Ed. ’59 operated. The friends sold late-night hot dogs, sandwiches and sodas to guys in the residence halls long after the dining hall closed and women students had gone inside to meet their 10 p.m. curfew.

During his student days, Merritt enjoyed boxing, football, playing golf on the College’s hillside 9-hole course, and piling classmates into his 1932 Plymouth for rides to the Pit, a downtown Westminster hangout. Summer jobs as a block layer taught Merritt much about the construction business. A two-year teaching stint after graduation – undertaken, in part, to fulfill a requirement of the senatorial scholarship that sent him to college – instilled in him an abiding interest in helping young people.

The 1952 graduate’s Merritt Properties supports dozens of organizations, such as The Children’s Guild, Special Olympics and Junior Achievement of Central Maryland, while Merritt has personally sponsored many college scholars. Merritt Properties is a privately held commercial real estate firm which develops and owns more than 14-million square feet of properties in the Baltimore-Washington and northern Virginia area. Merritt also is founder and owner of the Merritt Athletic Clubs that boasts over 17,000 members in nine Maryland locations.
 
McDaniel’s new 9000-square-foot fitness center, named the Leroy Merritt Fitness Center, spans two stories and creates an additional entrance to the Gill Center, home to the College’s 24 athletic teams. A dramatic glass curtain wall also offers stunning westerly views of live action on Green Terror playing fields and sunsets over the Catoctin Mountains and beyond.

“I am pleased to contribute what I hope will be a beautiful addition to the campus,” Merritt said about his gift toward the fitness center. “Little did I know that my time at college would be four of the best years of my life.”

The Carpe Diem (latin for “seize the day”) Campaign for McDaniel and its themes – Living, Learning and Teaching – reflect the three main areas targeted for funding. Gifts to the campaign will provide endowment funds to shape the future, capital funds to revitalize the residential living-learning community and annual funds to support operations.

“A successful campaign will help turn vision into reality – to shape a college where living, learning, and teaching enrich an already extraordinary educational experience,” said Campaign Chair Lee Rice ’48.

The campaign is more than three-quarters of the way to its goal with over $52 million in gifts and pledges raised to date. McDaniel’s trustees have committed $17 million. Eleven leadership donors have each pledged $1 million or more. And the campus community of faculty and staff made gifts and pledges totaling more than $770,000, exceeding the $400,000 goal and charting 68-percent participation.