Hometown boy creates fund for Hagerstown

• A new endowed fund with the Wayne County Foundation will benefit Hagerstown.
• A contribution of $100,000 from Max Brown, who grew up in Hagerstown, started the fund.
• Grants are expected to become available in 2016.
• Projects will focus on hunger, homelessness, domestic abuse and improving educational quality.

HAGERSTOWN, Ind. – Even though Max Brown moved away from Hagerstown after his junior year of high school, he has never forgotten the town where he grew up and where generations of his family lived before him.

Brown has stayed in touch with classmates from the Hagerstown High School Class of 1961 and attended their 50th reunion in 2011.

It was there that he heard current high school principal Mark Childs talk about conditions in the town and in the schools.

“I spoke to them about how many things have changed in our community (since the 1950s),” Childs said. “The socio-economic situation is drastically different.”

Brown was moved to work with the Wayne County Foundation to create the Hagerstown Hometown Fund. The stated purpose of the fund is to “provide support for organizations, programs and initiatives to improve the quality of life of Hagerstown residents, especially with respect to education and social services.”

Grants from the fund will assist efforts to combat hunger, homelessness and domestic abuse as well as programs aimed at improving the quality of education in Hagerstown schools or other organizations.

“This was Max’s idea,” said foundation executive director Steve Borchers. “This is what he wanted to do.”

Brown contributed $100,000 to start the fund, which was matched with $50,000 from the Lilly Endowment’s Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow (GIFT) challenge. Additional gifts are welcome and could qualify for more matching dollars.

Borchers said at this point, the fund is expected to generate about $7,500 a year for grants beginning in 2016.

“Hopefully it will provide some benefits,” said Brown, who is retired and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Brown, who had a Palladium-Item paper route in Hagerstown in the late 1950s, had a career in journalism. He and his wife, Lenore, established CM Media in 1975. At its height, the company employed 300 and included 24 newspapers, several magazines and specialty publications, and a commercial printing company. The Browns sold the company in 2007.

Hagerstown was an affluent community when Brown was growing up. “The town was prosperous, comfortable,” he said.

But Childs described something vastly different to Brown and his classmates.

“He told us that it was not uncommon for the schools to have students who were hungry and not sure where they would sleep that night,” said Brown. “It would have been unheard of in our childhood.”

Brown is confident the foundation will find partners and programs that will use the fund wisely. He made clear that the money is not for scholarships, but to address needs that will help give children a better life and better education.

“I think it’s a wonderful opportunity,” said Town Manager Christopher LaMar on hearing about the fund. “We can benefit from that kind of assistance right now. ... I’m looking forward to seeing what we’re able to do.”

So is Brown. And he encourages other people to contribute to the fund so it can do even more.

“Hopefully, it will grow,” he said.

Staff writer Louise Ronald: (765) 973-4469 or lronald@pal-item.com. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/LouiseRonaldPI.

How to donate

•Send a check to the Wayne County Foundation, 33 S. Seventh St., Richmond, IN 47374 designating the gift for the Hagerstown Hometown Fund, or go to www.waynecountyfoundation.org and click on the Donate Now button, where there will be an option to direct your gift to the fund.