Journal photo/ Paul Davis
The International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame,
on the edge of the URI campus, is showing signs of neglect.
SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. -- The International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame on Friday was locked, dark and empty.
The once-gleaming white building is dirty. Paint peels from the base of a thick round column in front. No flag flies from the bare pole at the entrance, and dandelions dot the lawn that supports the center's sign on Route 138, on the edge of the University of Rhode Island campus.
The sign includes a quote from Rhode Island philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein.
"To better one life is to better the world," it says.
Several black garbage bags sit on the first floor inside, not far from the Hall of Fame entrance.
In 1999, Daniel E. Doyle Jr., the founder of the Institute, helped organize a ceremony for the first Hall of Fame inductees, an impressive list that included Plato and former president George Herbert Walker Bush, a Phi Beta Kappa economics graduate of Yale and the captain of its 1948 baseball team.
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