THE MIAMI UNIVERSITY FUND

April, 1974

Just the right instant:

When Eddie Rickenbacker was adrift on that raft in the Pacific, without food or water and all but dead, a ship sailed by in the east. Those on the raft could see the ship, but it was far away. From shipboard they were but a tiny speck on a broad, broad sea.

And the sun was setting on their 22nd --- and probably last --- day.

Each wave would lift the raft for just an instant, then fall. But there were times during the minute or so while it crosses before the setting sun --- when, if someone on the ship had glanced toward it for just one lifted instant, he would have seen, in silhouette, the men on the raft.

Someone glanced!

We know about that instant because someone did look; saw; and acted. So seven lives continued and contributed greatly to the world in the future. Without the look, that moment would have passed unknown.

Now I don’t want to seem to overstate the effect of The Miami University Fund on future lives. But honestly, it works just that way.

For one student after another, some Fund action changes lives for the better. Sometimes they know. They tell us. Often no one knows. They can’t. A library book opens a mind without the slightest thought of the Fund, but someone’s money put it there. A teacher, his technique improved because of a gift from who-knows-who, sparks a student’s life-long interest. Miami’s Institute of Environmental Sciences, now making real changes in real communities, began with a study paid for with undesignated Fund dollars. Whose check did that?

Somebody’s. Waves of checks, really. Through the Fund, small gifts combine to do great things.

Nothing at Miami today is as desperate as Rickenbacker was on the raft. But the opportunities ahead are just as broad, the value to the future just as great, when someone looks; sees; and act...with a gift that lifts the student at just the right instant.

Is the chance worth the glance?

Now?

John E. Dolibois, Vice President

JED/dgd