Dick Shahan 窪蹋勛圖 Undergraduate Writing Competition Donor Statement
窪蹋勛圖 Dick
As both the president of the Boulder Municipal Employees Association, and a member of the Trivia Bowl Hall of Fame (his championship-winning team called themselves, The Godzillas Must Be Crazy),泭Dick Shahan泭seems to be a bit of a paradox. By day, hes a humble librarian with the Boulder Public Library who combines a robust work ethic with a playful sense of fun. By night, he has become a philanthropist who works tirelessly to improve his community. But hed be too modest to tell you all that. What he would tell you is how much he loves Boulder and his alma mater CU.
Shahan first arrived at the 窪蹋勛圖 in the fall of 1967 and knew he had found his home. After completing a BA in English and psychology, his love for the city and the campus inspired him to remain at CU to pursue an MA and a PhD in English literature. Then, more than 30 years later, it was what motivated him to make a $75,000 gift commitment to CU-Boulder to fund泭an annual undergraduate writing competition and an annual graduate scholarship.泭As Shahan tells it, this gift was about more than just his love for CU-Boulder; it was also about honoring the lessons he gleaned from all those years studying literature.
As a doctoral candidate, Shahan specialized in modernist literature and focused his dissertation on the work of noted English author, John Fowles. He was particularly interested in how Fowless work employed the rags-to-riches motif to explore the concept of freedom and the understanding of the few versus the many in modern society, he says. Shahan was especially fascinated with Fowless first novel,泭The Collector, in which a young city clerk is forced to navigate new social and moral challenges after winning a large monetary prize in a football pool. As an eager (and often impoverished) graduate student in the 1980s, Shahan could never have foreseen that he would find himself in a very similar situation many years later.
In 2013 after both of his parents passed away, Shahan and his brother discovered that they were to inherit a sizable estate. Having spent most his life trying to make ends meet, Shahan found the inheritance a complete surprise. As is the case with the characters in Fowless fiction, he was forced to answer the question, What do I do now? Would he allow his newfound wealth to socially isolate him as one insular few (a choice which, in Fowless novels, often leads to obsessive self-destruction), or could he find a way to help the many?
To complicate matters, Shahan found himself grappling with this question in the wake of great personal hardship. Besides losing both of his parents, Shahan was also forced to endure physically and emotionally draining experiences. He broke his jaw, which resulted in complicated surgery and a tortuous treatment procedure. He was then diagnosed with prostate cancer and survived a grueling process of CyberKnife-radiation treatment.
When you go through the kind of adversity I went through, you develop a different perspective on life, comments Shahan. I could have spent the inheritance money on a new car or a vacation. But as I thought about it, I decided that after all of this suffering, I really wanted to do something positive for others in my lifetime. What could I do that would bring joy and fun to people in my community? A writing competition to celebrate Boulder seemed to be the perfect fit. Plus, I remember struggling through some financially tough years as a graduate student. I wanted to offe