Need proof? When her first husband, Edgar Rogge, died of cancer in 1978 and his life insurance paid her $10,000, she gave $2,000 to the Kansas University athletic department.

“We were both big KU fans,” she said, sitting in the living room of her modest home near 22nd and Alabama streets — about six blocks from her favorite place in the world, Allen Fieldhouse.

Black, who has remarried, has had season tickets since 1968. Her seats — she has two — are in the bleachers across from the visiting team’s bench, six rows up. The season tickets cost her about $1,000 apiece.

“Oh, they’re great seats,” she said, noting that despite her three back surgeries she doesn’t miss many games.

Her loyalty to the crimson and blue has been unquestioned. That is, until Thursday.

That’s when she got a letter from the Williams Fund, the fund-raising arm of KU athletic department. The letter asked her to call the Williams Fund office. Some questions had come up.

She called right away.

“They said that to keep the seats, I’d have to pay $5,000” extra in donations to the fund, she said. It may as well have been $5 million.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” she said. “I can’t pay that much, I won’t pay that much. I guess I’ll just watch the games on television — but I have to say it’s going to hurt when I see somebody else sitting in those seats.”

The market

Williams Fund director Jay Hinrichs knows that Black’s seats, if on the open market, would fetch $10,000 beyond the ticket price in a heartbeat.

He also knows Black and 120 other season-ticket holders have either let their Williams Fund memberships expire or they’ve fallen behind in their payments. Basic membership is $100 per year.

That’s why the letters were sent.

“When you’re sitting in the premium seating section at Allen Fieldhouse, you want to know that the person sitting next to you is helping support KU athletics — you want to know that they’re active members of the Williams Fund,” Hinrichs said.

Of the fieldhouse’s approximately 16,300 seats about 5,500 are considered premium by the Williams Fund.

Hinrichs said the letters were part of an in-house campaign aimed at “getting nonmembers to become members and getting inactive members to become active members.”

Williams Fund members whose accounts are paid up will not be sent letters, he said.

Those who have fallen behind are being asked to either commit to contributing at least $5,000 a year or accept lesser seats.

“No one is going to lose their seats — they’ll still have seats; they just won’t be where they were,” Hinrichs said.

Those in line for the given-up seats, he said, will be expected to contribute $10,000 a year for a pair of seats.

Black confirmed that she let her Williams Fund membership — she paid at the $150-a-year level — lapse in 1998 because she couldn’t afford the donation on top of the ticket fees.

“In my mind, we hadn’t signed a contract or anything with the Williams Fund, so in the years when we had the money, sure, we paid it. But later on when we didn’t have the money, we decided we wouldn’t — really, it’s not that we wouldn’t, we couldn’t. We’re retired. We’re on fixed income.”

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Black said she and her husband were living on about $25,000 a year.

“That $5,000 they’re asking for is one-fifth of my mother’s (household) income,” said Kate Rogge, Black’s daughter, the oldest of her five children — four of whom graduated from KU.

Rogge is furious. “What’s really going on here,” she said, “is they know they can get more money for my mother’s seat. They want her out of the way, and this is their way of making it happen. These old people just aren’t dying fast enough for the KU athletic department.”

Needing the dough

That’s not a fair assessment, Hinrichs said.

Like all universities its size, KU’s athletic department needs all the money it can raise to offset increasing costs and to remain competitive.

Last year, he said, the Williams Fund was expected to raise $5 million. This year’s goal is $5.5 million.

So there’s nothing wrong, he said, with asking someone to pay $5,000 for two seats for which someone is willing to pay $10,000.

Other universities, he said, have had so-called ‘donor seating’ — “That’s where, to sit in a certain section, you have to pay so much money” — for years.

At Nebraska or Oklahoma universities, he said, no one thinks twice about the biggest contributors snaring the best seats. It’s expected.

“We don’t do that,” Hinrichs said. “We’ve got all different levels of contributors sitting all over the place.”

And, he said, ticket holders who’ve not fallen behind in their contributions are not being asked to come up with $5,000.

It’s entirely possible, he said, that someone sitting near Black is contributing only $100 per year.

How long this arrangement lasts remains to be seen.

Rogge said that when she and her mother called the Williams Fund office, they were told that next year all current premium-seat season ticket holders would be expected to contribute at least $5,000 to retain the option of purchasing a pair of season tickets.

Such an arrangement, Hinrichs said, is under consideration but has not been approved.

“That’s a fair way to do it — and a lot of places do it that way,” he said. “But the intangibles have to be taken into account. By that I mean, what about that loyal KU fan who’s been a supporter for, say, 30 years — but now they can’t afford premium seating? You don’t just walk away from them.”

Giving these long-time ticket holders the option of contributing more or accepting other seats, Hinrichs said, is a fair compromise that honors fan loyalty while maximizing contributions.

What compromise?

Frank Stuckey, who lives in Hutchinson, doesn’t see much compromise.

His 80-year-old father-in-law, Lloyd Cole, has had four season tickets since 1965.

“He got the letter, too,” Stuckey said. “When we called, they said he hadn’t made his contribution and to hold onto the seats he’d need to come up with $10,000.”

Because his father-in-law likes to travel, Stuckey handles his bill-paying chores.

“If they sent him a bill (for fund membership) I don’t remember getting it,” he said. “He was paying at the $500 level.”

Stuckey said his father-in-law couldn’t accept less convenient seats.

“He has trouble getting around,” he said. “There’s no way he could take the three-hour drive up there and then walk all that way. It doesn’t matter because he can’t afford $10,000.”

Asked whether he’d put up $5,000 to hold on to two of the four seats, Stuckey, who owns a lumber yard, replied: “You’re up in Lawrence, aren’t you? Yeah, well, the economy in the rest of the state isn’t so hot — you get outside the major metropolitan areas and there’s nothing going on. The economy’s not worth a darn.”

Like Black, Stuckey said he probably would watch the games on television.

“You know, I understand why they’re doing this,” he said. “But it’ll end up changing the atmosphere of the place.”

He explained: “The guy who sits behind us, he’s a car dealer there in Kansas City. He’s lucky if he gets there eight or nine minutes into the first half, and he never stays to the end.

“Now ask yourself, what kind of fan is that? But you know what? He’s got the money. He’ll pay that $10,000.”