The University of Maine at Presque Isle received the largest financial gift in campus history Tuesday.
The surprise $2.1 million bequest came from the Don and Linda Zillman estate. The former UMPI president died in 2023, and his wife, Linda, died in September.
Along with launching a Zillman professorship to benefit faculty research, the couple also founded the Zillman Family Greenhouse to advance agricultural science. Tuesday’s gift makes more than $3 million the couple have given to the Presque Isle university.
The funds are given to use as the university sees fit, which is a testament to the Zillmans’ belief in the local campus, UMPI President Ray Rice said.
“That is just an especially important and wonderful opportunity for a donor to gift this money to an institution with the trust that this institution will use it appropriately,” Rice said.
There currently are no specific plans for the funds, but the campus and community will discuss how best to use it for what the Zillmans treasured most: learning and the arts, Rice said.
The couple was known for their extensive support of academics and the arts. Their donation of $1.3 million to the University of Maine Art Gallery in Bangor led to its being named the Linda G. and Donald N. Zillman Art Museum in 2020.
Don Zillman served as UMPI’s 10th president from 2006 to 2012. He came in at a time when the campus was embroiled in chaos, Rice said.
The local facility joined other campuses in expressing no confidence in then-University of Maine System Chancellor Joseph Westphal, largely based on Westphal’s much-contested plan of reform that included some campus consolidations. UMPI faculty also maintained no confidence in campus president Karl Burgher, hired in 2005. Burgher left in summer 2006.
“We were in the midst of a real season of despair and wondering,” Rice said. “Don was just so disarming, he was so logical, but there was a quirkiness to him that got you to sit back and just release all of your frustration and all of the past baggage.”
Zillman engaged with faculty, students and the community at large in a way that rebuilt trust and put the campus back on track for the future, he said.
More than 70 people filled the campus center for Tuesday’s announcement, including members of the Board of Visitors and foundation board. At the front of the room, a slide show portrayed images of Don and Linda Zillman on campus.
Jim Munch of Bangor, an attorney and executor of the Zillman estate, presented the check to Rice. The couple loved the Presque Isle campus and community, and up until her death, UMPI was on Linda Zillman’s mind, Munch said.
“She talked a lot as she declined about the University of Maine at Presque Isle,” Munch said. “Don and Linda did not have their own children, but a lot of us became their children. And their legacy and the idea of passing that on was something that Linda spoke about over the last two years [that] was immensely important to them.”
The couple had deep faith in the University of Maine system and its individual universities and always wanted to build them up, he said. That’s why today’s gift to UMPI is given without restriction, because they trusted university leaders to find the best ways to support faculty, the arts and the community.
Though they often tended to things in different parts of the country, they always collaborated by phone with “marvelous discussions,” Munch said.
The couple came from working families, and the assets they built were saved over the years.
“This is their lasting memorial, is that it will keep growing and doing good things,” he said.
The couple were as interested in science and research as they were in visual and performing arts, Rice said. Conversations over the next several months will take place about how to use the bequest.
The campus will also pursue creating a memorial of some type that reflects who the Zillmans were and what they meant to the campus.
“That will be part of a community discussion and that will take a while,” Rice said. “But it’s something for all of us to be part of that discussion and have input about how we best make use of this gift from them.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the day of the presentation.