Tavie Abell endows a scholarship in honor of her father, Professor Paul Abell.
The Paul I. Abell Memorial Honors Student Award is established at URI in memory of Paul Abell, a chemistry professor at the University for more than 40 years.
Octavia “Tavie” Abell, one of the University’s youngest donors, seems to be following in her late father’s footsteps.
Paul Abell worked with Richard and Mary Leakey, the famed anthropologist/paleontologist team, for 17 summers, discovering the famous hominid footprint in Tanzania in 1978. At 3.8 million years, the footprint provides the oldest evidence of two-footedness.
A chemistry professor at the University for more than 40 years, Abell was a true Renaissance man. He was a painter, book collector, gardener, cabinetmaker, and violinist with the URI orchestra.
“He was one of the coolest people you could meet,” says his 14-year-old daughter. She recalls a photograph of her father wearing a pair of student-made pretzel glasses and smiles.
When he died at 80 in 2004, Abell left half of his estate to his young daughter for “educational purposes.” Rather than spend the money on herself, Tavie decided to use some of it to honor her father in a way she knows he would approve.
The teen is leading the effort, with her two half-sisters, Erin Gallagher of Albany, Calif., and Susan Abell of Winchester, Mass., to establish the Paul I. Abell Memorial Honors Student Award at URI. The awards will help honors students pursue their research interests, which could include travel expenses.
“My father had tons of opportunities, yet he chose to work at URI. That says something about the University,” says Tavie, explaining why she chose URI students to be beneficiaries of her largess. “Long after he retired, the URI Honors Program asked him to teach an evolution class. He loved being with the students.
“When I was young and went shopping at local stores, it seemed to me that the whole world knew my father. Former students would come up to him and want to talk,” Tavie recalls. The young benefactor expects some of them would like to contribute to the newly established fund.
“He was the quintessential hip professor,” says Tom Zorabedian, now the senior development officer for the College of Arts and Sciences, who took one of Abell’s chemistry classes. “He had such youthful ideas no one thought of him as old. Many of us were non-science majors,” Zorabedian recalled. “Yet he was able to make chemistry accessible and relevant for everyone.”
Since her parents divorced when she was young, Tavie divided her time between homes. Her father lived in a geodesic dome, which he designed and built just outside the URI campus.
“I might study architecture,” the eighth grader says, recalling her days at the dome. “When I was born, he added a princess tower to it,” she says. “And a flag.”
To contribute to the Paul I. Abell Memorial Honors Student Award, contact Tom Zorabedian at 401-874-2853 or zman@advance.uri.edu.
By Jan Wenzel ‘87Photo by Nora Lewis
