Planned Giving A Lasting Impact on Students Bob Delorme ’53 impacted students for most of his adult life. And at age 86, the political science professor emeritus at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) has made a provision in his will to Saint John’s University to continue impacting first-generation college students with scholarship support. His 92-year-old brother Gregory, a designated beneficiary in the younger brother’s will, instructed Bob to give the money to Saint John’s, creating a unique “brotherly” scholarship fund for students. A first-generation college student from Cando, N.D., Delorme is grateful for the guidance he received
from local business people with ties to Saint John’s and the College of Saint Benedict. Upon discharge from the U.S. Army in 1956, he returned to Saint John’s to work as assistant registrar to Fr. Gunther Rolfson, OSB. Delorme received his doctorate in political science at the University of Minnesota in 1968 and taught at CSULB for 34 years. In 1974, as department chair, Delorme organized a semester-long symposium featuring six nationally known speakers who each spent two days on the campus presenting a major address and participating in class discussions. Having been active in the 1968 presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy ’35, Delorme included him as one of the major speakers. The speeches and classroom discussions were edited and published in a book, The State of American Society, to which Delorme added a chapter summarizing and interpreting the contributions of the speakers. The connection to Senator McCarthy began in 1953 when McCarthy was SJU’s commencement speaker. This continued when former professor Emerson Hynes ’37, who worked in the McCarthy senate office, helped the young doctoral student attain summer internships in 1963 and 1964 in the Bureau of the Census. After moving to California to teach, Delorme returned to campus over the years to visit Fr. Gunther, former professors, classmates and friends. More recently he returned to campus for the Eugene McCarthy lectures and now has a special connection to the Eugene McCarthy Center. He donated 27 Eugene McCarthy books and memorabilia, including the iconic blue and white Gene McCarthy presidential campaign daisy stickers.
Your Gift, Your Impact. To learn more about making a bequest to Saint John’s, contact Jim Dwyer ’75, director of planned giving, at 800-635-7303 or jdwyer@csbsju.edu
Bob Delorme ’53