Wendt in middle of casino battle
Foundation aids foes with $1.9 million
Since its founding in 1955, the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation has given away more than $61 million in grants to organizations in Western New York. Without the Wendt Foundation’s help, there might no longer be a Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, a Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo or the Hopevale Union Free School District.
Wendt money has gone toward the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House and Graycliff, the Roycroft campus in East Aurora and the building of the Buffalo Niagara Medical complex. It has funded hundreds of social programs through churches, the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, the Boy Scouts of America and the United Way.
In each of the thousands of Wendt grants over the years, the philosophy has been the same: step in when government or other means of funding are not there, and do it as low-key as possible.
Suddenly, though, the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation finds itself at the center of controversy.
Talk-show hosts and bloggers have criticized the foundation for the $1.9 million it has spent so far funding the lawsuit against the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Buffalo Creek Casino in Buffalo.
Wendt trustees voted in January 2006 to finance the lawsuit and have funneled $1,905,000 to the Network of Religious Communities, one of the suit’s plaintiffs.
Citizens for a Better Buffalo has used those funds to hire lawyers to combat the U. S. Justice Department attorneys who represent the U. S. secretary of the interior and the National Indian Gaming Commission.
The Senecas, not a part of the suit, have paid for their own attorneys as a friend of the court.
Wendt trustees have been scorned as elitist, taking it upon themselves to protect the poor against the ills of gambling, critics say.
They’ve been accused of depriving the area of jobs that a $333 million casino and hotel would bring, of putting a crimp in an already struggling local economy.
So far, attorneys financed by the Wendt money have won a partial victory. U. S. District Judge William M. Skretny, while finding the nine-acre plot on Michigan Avenue is sovereign Indian land, said it does not meet the exception for off-reservation gambling.
Legal bills will certainly grow as the case winds through appeals.
The three trustees made the unanimous decision to fund the lawsuit, they say, because those most hurt by gambling could never afford to take on the U. S. government.
They argue that a casino, especially one that relies on a local market, will drain the economy and take money from those who can least afford it.
“The demands on the social agencies will increase greatly, as will the demands on the Wendt Foundation,” the trustees said in a joint statement. “It will be impossible to meet these needs.”
And they point to one of their own success stories as ironic proof of the kind of devastation they say a casino brings.
A major player in the 1980s Wendt battle to save Hopevale, school official Kenneth Mangione, was sentenced to prison in 2007 after he admitted to embezzling $192,000 from the school. He told prosecutors he used the money to gamble in casinos in Niagara Falls and Niagara Falls, Ont.
The trustees say they scrupulously follow the rules in awarding their grants and are confident their bankrolling the casino lawsuit would be upheld by any agency that looked at it.
Margaret L. Wendt was the sole surviving daughter of William F. Wendt, a co-founder of Buffalo Forge. She never married and lived alone in a house on Richmond Avenue.
The Rev. Ralph Loew, the late pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, befriended her soon after moving to town, discovered that she, too, was a Lutheran, and she soon began attending his church.
“She was an elegant and wealthy woman who, above all, cherished her privacy and shunned publicity,” Loew told The Buffalo News in a 1993 interview.
Wendt was always after him, Loew said, to help those less fortunate, and in 1955, she established her foundation with an initial grant of $500,000.
The original trustees were Loew; her financial adviser, Samuel Lunt; and her attorney, William Morey.
The rules were simple. The three were to screen grant requests and invest the principal. In return, they would be paid a fee of 3 percent of the amount the principal grew by each year.
Their appointments were lifetime, and they would choose their successors.
Wendt suffered a coma four years later, Loew told The News in the earlier interview, and Lunt kept the maid in her home and her Chrysler in her driveway in case she ever recovered.
She never did, dying in 1972 and leaving virtually all of her $14 million estate to charity, including $11 million to her foundation. The foundation has since grown to $120 million.
Lunt has been succeeded as trustee by his son, Thomas, also a financial adviser. Loew was replaced by his daughter, Janet Loew Day, a teacher. And Morey was replaced by his law partner and frequent Wendt spokesman, Robert J. Kresse.
The 3 percent reimbursement still applies, but with the growth of the foundation over the years, has brought the three trustees an annual fee of $150,000 each, according to 2006-2007 tax filings. The Wendt Foundation is the second largest in Western New York, behind the John R. Oishei Foundation’s $293 million.
