The late R.R.M. Carpenter Jr. was in the stands cheering UD's football players at 95 percent of the games. Off the field, he supported some University athletes 100 percent.

Carpenter's Friends Foundation paid tuition and costs for thousands of promising athletes during his 45 years as a University trustee.

When players needed tutoring, a Friends Foundation check arrived.

When coaches mentioned that a student needed help, a job or a scholarship materialized.

When conference-winning tackle Dan Tripodi, AS '61 '63M, needed an extra year to finish his degree, Carpenter offered him a part-time job as a physical education teacher at The Pilot School, another beneficiary of the Carpenter family's largesse.

Now Tripodi and other alumni whose lives were buoyed by Carpenter's generosity are reaching back to help others.

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When Bob Carpenter was determined to find a coach who could build pre-war UD into a small-college football power, he looked to his own alma mater, Duke. He brought Duke alum Bill Murray north.

Murray started winning on Oct. 26, 1940, and his team was undefeated until Oct. 3, 1947.

His daughter, Joy Witman, '53 AS, says Murray treated his players like his own sons, even corresponding with each of them when Pearl Harbor rewrote their futures and they were deployed around the world.

Some of Witman's happiest memories are of her family's years in Newark. She and her husband Dr. Robert C. Witman, AS '53 PhD have endowed a scholarship in her father's memory.

The William D. Murray Scholarship is open to scholar-athletes who wish to attend graduate school after their athletic eligibility is up.

"Because he believed in sports for everybody, we thought this would be a good way to preserve his memory,'' Joy Witman says. "Education was very important to him."

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Dan Tripodi figured he'd be a bricklayer like his father, until West Point phoned.

A boy from Tripodi's high school football team had mailed a game film to West Point. The coach didn't want him, but he wanted Tripodi.

"The coach called me up, and he said, 'Did you take your College Boards?' I said, 'What are they?''' Tripodi says.

When Tripodi's high school coach heard he was college shopping, he took him to his alma mater in Newark, Del. Tripodi says he fell in love with the University but didn't have the tuition money.

"Although my parents would have given me everything they had, there was just no way," he says. "I couldn't have gone to school without a scholarship.''

He entered Delaware on a Friends Foundation scholarship and he was a so-so student until he took biology to fill his science requirement.

"It was boring as hell until one day we had to look through the microscope. I literally lost all sense of time,'' he remembers. "One of the professors tapped on my shoulder and said, 'You know, lab is up.' I was late for football practice that day. I fell in love with science on that day.''

From then on his grades improved dramatically until one of his teachers, the late W.R.A. Bailey, an internationally known UD microbiologist, approached him about a graduate assistantship.

Tripodi is now executive director of a healthcare consulting group and his wife, Sharon Hunsicker Tripodi AS '63 owns an interior design business. They have endowed the Bailey-Lude Scholarship for a football player majoring in biology.

"As we get a little older and I think how I started out and how I ended up, I really have a lot of thanks to go around,'' he says.

"Many people have an impact on your life, but there are two people who kind of turned me around from the direction I was going to where I ended up today. One was Milo Lude, my line coach, who is a wonderful, wonderful man. The other was Dr. Bailey, who was more than a mentor. Both were like second fathers to me. They had more faith in me than I had in myself and pushed and guided me.''

"I wanted some other kid to benefit the way I did, and I thought what a great thing it would be to set it up to honor those two guys. That would make another kid happy and kind of pay my dues back to those two guys who helped me so much,'' he says. "All of us who benefit from someone or some school ought to pay back a little from the success that they have received."

Ethan Stenger BE '57 says his UD degree coupled with his service as a Marine Corps officer opened doors for him in the business world.

He says the UD degree would have been impossible if there had been no Friends Foundation grants available in the early 1950s.

Stenger's dad died when he was young. He did not have the money to enroll at UD, but he did have standout football talent. Although he played for the first time as a high school senior, he made one of Maryland's All-State teams that year.

Stenger got his education at UD and met his wife Tish Allen CHEP '58, on campus. They developed lasting friendships here and their sons also went on to gradate from UD.

Now the Stengers have established The Ethan '57 and Tish '58 Stenger Football Scholarship. Their gift was matched by Verizon, where he retired as a vice president of administration.

They see the scholarship reaching back to help another generation.

"My wife and I hope that it will do the same for some young persons that it did for me, give them an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't get," he says.

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 Fred P. Rullo Jr., AS '63, played high school basketball, baseball and football well enoug

h that several colleges offered him athletic scholarships.

Rullo's first choice was UD, but he was one of five children in a family of modest means. He might have worn another school's jersey if the Friends Foundation had not offered him a grant.

That particular Friends Foundation grant has paid dividends for the University from the moment of issue.

Fred Rullo lettered in football and baseball. His daughters, Linda Rullo McGrail, CHEP '87, and Patricia Rullo Fischer, CHEP '85, are alums. Linda played women's lacrosse for the University and was a member of the 1984 East Coast Conference championship team and her husband Joe McGrail, AS '87, captained UD's football team in 1986. Fred and his wife, Madeleine, donated $1 million toward the construction of the
2,000-seat Fred P. Rullo Stadium in 1998. They continue to be leading supporters of the University.

Rullo says he is thankful R.R.M. (Bob) Carpenter Jr. underwrote the Friends Foundation in the late 1950s and is grateful to his son, R.R.M. Carpenter III (Ruly), for his continuing support of the University. Ruly Carpenter chairs the Board of Trustees Committee on Student Life and Athletics. He is the third generation of the Carpenter family to be actively involved with UD athletics.

"I often reflect on what Mr. Carpenter accomplished with the grants. I could never do what he did but I am trying to help the University in as many ways as I can. One thing I am certain of is that he got me thinking in the right direction. I see a lot of Mr. Carpenter in Ruly. The Carpenter family has just been fantastic.''

As the beneficiary of Carpenter's largesse, Rullo graduated from UD and entered a successful career in the chemical industry with Atlantic Richfield. After his retirement, he started two specialty chemical companies of his own.

Through the years, Rullo stayed in contact with UD friends, came back to campus and gave back to the University.

"I just thought a payback was in order,'' he says. "I thought the University had really given me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by providing me a full grant-in-aid to help me be successful in life. I have been blessed with some good fortune, and I just wanted to pay back the University."