On April 28, 2011, Richard ’56 ’58 and Barbara DelFavero attended a signing ceremony to honor their $1.5-million gift to support the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The gift will create the DelFavero Chair in Agricultural and Resource Economics, the second endowed chair in the college.
Dick DelFavero’s connection to UConn goes back to the time when he was eight years old. It was the 1940s and meat was rationed and in short supply. However, DelFavero’s father, a self-employed construction contractor, helped organize a 4-H rabbit club in Meriden. Father and son were invited to Storrs to speak and demonstrate to a 4-H audience about how they constructed their hutches.
“I remember being in a lecture hall in the engineering building, watching farmers and professors listen to us. They recognized our work and invited us to be in a group photo on the front steps,” he recalls today. “It really made an impression on me.”
Ten years later, after a childhood spent growing vegetables, planting seedlings and raising chickens for his family and for sale, DelFavero was told by his father that he was expected to be the first son in the family to go to college.
“I didn’t want to go,” he recalls. “But my father said to me, ‘Try it for a semester.’ After my first semester I told him that I wanted to leave. He convinced me to stay a second semester. And then a third. And a fourth. We had that same conversation so many times, until I finally realized that I may as well stay to graduate.”
That path through UConn and life has turned into a lifetime of generosity to his alma mater. DelFavero has contributed regularly for decades to support scholarships in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. He will be honored in April with the Augustus and Charles Storrs Award, the college’s highest recognition, and is both a lifetime member of the UConn Alumni Association and a member of The Founders Society of the UConn Foundation.
He says that he gives back in large part because he can see first-hand the difference it makes.
“My scholarship recipients write letters to me, just saying thanks. Some of their stories are amazing. They have so much potential and opportunity. It’s really an inspiration to me, so it’s a very easy and heartening experience to give back.”
Graduating in 1956 with a degree in agricultural engineering and going on to earn a graduate degree in agricultural economics, DelFavero began a career in agricultural equipment marketing. After six years, he returned to Connecticut to carry on his father’s enterprise.
Through the decades, DelFavero Builders constructed more than 400 condominiums in central Connecticut, as well as business and industrial buildings. Carrying on the family tradition, Dick’s wife, Barbara, and his son, Jeffrey, were involved in running the company. The UConn family tradition stays strong as well: one of his daughters is an alumna, and two of his grandchildren attend today.
After Dick experienced a serious health condition and was sidelined for six months, he came to a realization: for his entire adult life, he had been “a farmer without a farm.” Turning over control of the company to his son, he returned to his love of the land and purchased a defunct 500-acre dairy farm in northern Vermont.
Today, Hayward Farm boasts about 125 head of cattle, down a little from its peak, but more than enough for the 76-year-old DelFavero to maintain on a daily basis.
He says he is humbled by the Storrs award. He has a direct association with the Storrs family, having negotiated with them in the 1960s for the purchase of their home on Route 195. The house was used for the Alpha Gamma Rho agricultural fraternity, of which he was a founder and remains an active member.
“When I first heard that I was named for the award, I was dumbfounded. To me in my farm setting up here in Vermont, this is a really big deal. It’s just wonderful. I truly attribute my success in life to my education at UConn.”
