Wesley Fastiff, A54, A90P Photo: Leah Fasten

FINANCIAL AID INITIATIVE

A Supporter for the Long Haul

Early in his legal career, Wesley Fastiff, A54, A90P, went the extra mile for trucking companies, winning a big case on their behalf and negotiating a national labor contract. Grateful trucking firms sent him toy-sized models with their names printed on the sides. Over the years, hundreds of clients have added to the collection, which now crowds Fastiff’s office. “Other attorneys display diplomas on their walls—I have trucks,” he says. Meanwhile, Littler Mendelson, the two-person firm he joined fifty years ago, has grown and grown. It employs more than twelve hundred lawyers around the globe and has been named law firm of the year in labor and management law by U.S. News and Best Lawyers. Fastiff is chairman emeritus.

Now he is going the extra mile for Tufts. The university has played an important part in his life: he married a Jumbo—Bonnie, BOUVÉ60, A90P—and their son, Eric, who practices law in San Francisco, graduated in 1990. (They also have a daughter, Pamela, an attorney in Connecticut.)

A few years ago, Wesley and Bonnie created the Fastiff Scholarship Fund with a $1 million gift. Fastiff understands the importance of financial aid from personal experience: he attended Tufts on an ROTC scholarship, before serving as a naval officer for two years and going on to law school. Although the couple have added to the fund regularly, they made a special contribution in June—an extra $100,000 in honor of Wesley’s sixtieth reunion. Their gift will be matched by the Tufts Financial Aid Initiative, doubling its impact.

“Tufts gave me the background and desire to excel in whatever I do,” Wesley says. “We want other students to have that opportunity, regardless of their financial ability.”