U of M to get $3.7M present

■ A big share is for women’s sports: $2.6M

As part of a $3.7 million donation to the University of Memphis from the Helen and Jabie Hardin Charitable Trust announced Friday, the Tigers will receive what they claim to be the largest single gift directed largely for women’s sports at the school — a whopping $2.6 million of the total.

University of Memphis athletic director Tom Bowen characterized the gift as significant in light of Title IX, the section of a federal law that mandates gender equity in education.

“With the gift from the Hardin (Trust), we can begin additional facility construction projects that will benefit our women’s programs as we enter the Big East Conference next year,” Bowen said in a news release.

The gift included a $1

million donation to the University of Memphis honor program, to which the trust had donated before, and $100,000 to the School of Public Health.

In 1936, the Hardins founded a company that later became Hardin’s-Sysco. Jabez Sanford “Jabie” Hardin died in December 2007 and Helen Mosher Hardin died a year later. Their only son died in 1985. According to a 2011 tax filing, the Hardin trust has assets of nearly $18 million and lists donations to multiple local causes.

“I am a strong believer in the philosophy that if you take something from the land/community, you should also give something back,” Jabie Hardin said in 1997, when he was inducted into the Society of Entrepreneurs.

The athletics portion of the gift will go toward a significant renewal of Olympic sports facilities on the school’s Park Avenue Campus. The school plans to redesign and rebuild the track and field, enlarging it to enclose grandstands and install a soccer field in the center of it. That will benefit both the men’s and women’s track teams and the men’s and women’s soccer teams. Memphis currently plays home soccer matches at Mike Rose Soccer Complex, in southeast Shelby County, a dozen or so miles away from campus.

The Hardin gift will also enable the U of M to move into a second phase of construction at its sixyear-old women’s softball stadium, adding a new clubhouse, locker rooms, coaches’ offices, indoor pitching and batting areas and various other support amenities.

In October, Bowen completed a strategic plan for the future of the athletic department that includes a major evaluation of the department’s overall facilities portfolio.

Much of the planning involves facilities enhancements on the Park Avenue Campus. A new men’s and women’s basketball practice facility there is being discussed.