ShareThisDULUTH, Minn. - The money wasn't hers, not really. And anyway, she didn't want it. "Blood money," she called it.
Maureen Tobin Stanley's father was a violent man who, just before her 16th birthday, punched her in the face so hard that she ended up in the emergency room. He died by violence, too -- shot twice in the head.
So when Tobin Stanley received a settlement from her father's death, she knew what it ought to support: peace.
An associate professor of foreign languages and literatures at the University of Minnesota Duluth, she created a scholarship for students who stand up for peaceful solutions. The first recipient, who will receive $1,000, will be picked next spring.
"Hopefully it will get people thinking, get people to be aware of what one does at every level," she said. "To implement change to a greater degree, I think you have to do something at an intellectual level."
In a way, the $25,000 endowment Tobin Stanley established is just the latest example of how she has used her life to respond to and counter her father's violence toward her family. As a researcher and a writer, she focuses on injustice, the persecution of women, people subverting dominant forces.
One night during the fall of 2008, sleeping in a Twin Cities hotel, Tobin Stanley awoke from a vivid dream. In it, two children were playing in a tree, when one told the other: "You need to go home because your father just died."
She, her husband and her two children returned to Duluth the next day to a phone message from her brother. He had gotten a call from a Bossier City, La., police officer saying their father, at age 66, had been shot to death.
Tobin Stanley and her husband traveled south to speak with police, deal with her father's belongings and arrange for a military funeral.
News reports from that time followed the shooting and subsequent trials. The man who shot Tobin Stanley's father did so after an argument, one newspaper noted, and, one hung jury later, pleaded guilty to negligent homicide.
She received more than $30,000 from a wrongful death suit earlier this year.
She donated some the money, then set up the Tobin Peace and Non-violence Scholarship. Applicants will submit essays explaining the value of their scholastic major in promoting peace.
Tobin Stanley hopes the money will go to "someone who wants to make the world a better place."
(Contact Jenna Ross at jross(at)startribune.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
Editors: This story is for print use only. Must credit Minneapolis Star Tribune
