Nelson Withington’s Legacy: The Withington Fund Reaches Million-Dollar Giving Mark

Back in 1946, when Nelson Withington joined the board of the Brattleboro Outing Club, Harry Truman was president and movie tickets cost 40 cents.

Decades passed but what did not change was Withington’s belief in the power of recreation to build health and bring people together. During his lifetime, he donated money to help pay for Brattleboro’s public tennis courts, indoor skating rink, and a Zamboni to resurface the ice. Then, as the local business leader neared the end of his life, Withington took steps to keep giving in perpetuity to the cause and the town he loved through a giving account at the Vermont Community Foundation.

The strategy worked. Now, 22 years after Withington’s death in 2002 at the age of 97, his namesake fund has awarded over $1 million to recreation and other projects benefitting the public in Brattleboro. The Withington Fund grants, more than 30 in all, have supported refurbishments to parks, playing fields, and the creation of new amenities such a disc golf course.

“Nelson Withington was visionary in seeing that a fund focused on recreation and parks for the Brattleboro community could enhance the quality of life and physical health of children, youth, and adults,” said Elisabeth Marx, a senior philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation who staffs the Withington fund in partnership with a local advisory committee and the Brattleboro Recreation and Parks Department.

Withington set up his giving account, also known as a donor advised fund, at the Vermont Community Foundation to be a permanent charitable resource. The fund will continue to make grants, currently totaling about $80,000 each year, for generations to come.

Born in Belmont, Mass., Withington played All-American lacrosse at Yale University. He moved to Brattleboro in 1940 to work as general manager of Dunham Brothers, the shoe manufacturer that eventually shipped nationwide and also pioneered the outlet shopping concept. In 1970, Withington founded B-D-R- Transport, a trucking company.

Throughout his career, Withington gave time and money to boost recreation in Brattleboro. He was an early backer of Living Memorial Park, which was created in 1955, and helped fund the Nelson Withington Skating Facility there. Local newspaper clippings show Withington, an amateur hockey player in his younger years, smiling broadly next to skaters competing in the Withington Cup, a tournament that still happens every year.           

Brattleboro resident Pete Richards, a local advisory committee member to the Withington fund, grew up skiing and swimming at Memorial Park. As an adult, he’s watched his children and other young people enjoy those same recreation facilities, and new ones, thanks in part to Withington’s gift to Brattleboro.     

“What an amazing thing to do for the town,” Richards said.

The Withington Fund’s most recent projects include replacing play equipment, lighting, and safety fences in small neighborhood parks to make them more inviting for nearby residents.

The giving fund has also elevated in recent grants the importance of reaching all segments of the community, with a grant to help the nonprofit Elnu Abenaki Atowi project purchase and preserve a two-acre parcel near a culturally significant petroglyph site on the Wantastegok sacred site and a grant to nonprofit Out in the Open to help build a rural LGBTQ+ center, both in Brattleboro.

As the Withington Fund celebrates 20 years of grantmaking, it epitomizes the closing sentence in a town history of Living Memorial Park that documents the work of volunteers who built bleachers, put down sod, and donated funds.

“In Brattleboro, people make dreams come true.”