$10 million gift from Phil Morse to build new gymnasium at school
Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire, has announced a landmark $10 million gift from alumnus and philanthropist Phil Morse, the largest capital gift commitment in the school’s history, setting in motion the creation of a new 40,000-square-foot Athletics and Wellness Center that will redefine student life and campus wellness for generations to come.
The gift advances a long-envisioned plan for a centralized Athletics and Wellness Quad, aligning directly with one of the Academy’s top strategic priorities and underscoring Morse’s enduring belief in the formative power of athletics, physical challenge, and shared community spaces.
The new facility will replace aging infrastructure with a modern, light-filled complex designed to serve the entire school community. It will include a multi-court gymnasium, weight room, indoor track, expanded athletic training facilities, locker rooms, a dance studio, spectator seating, and flexible multipurpose spaces capable of hosting practices, wellness programming, assemblies, and informal gatherings.
The Center will anchor a pedestrian-friendly quad that unites existing athletic facilities—Whittemore Athletic Center, Akerstrom Arena, Pope Field Complex, and the Barn Field House—around a new grass gathering space intended to function as a social and communal heart of campus.
For Morse, whose career spans entrepreneurship, sports leadership, and philanthropy, the gift is rooted less in bricks and mortar than in lived experience. A standout post-graduate student-athlete at Kimball Union, he earned varsity letters in football, basketball, and baseball, captained the basketball team, and received the Fred Wesley Wyman Award for Most Valuable Player. Mentored by legendary coaches George Akerstrom and Robert “Stretch” Gillam ’56, Morse has often reflected on how athletics at KUA shaped his discipline, leadership, and lifelong relationships.
“The coaches, teammates, and mentors I had there shaped me in lasting ways,” he said, noting that many of those bonds remain among his most meaningful friendships. In recognition of that legacy, the new facility will be named the Morse Athletics & Wellness Center, with an internal space honoring his enduring friendship with classmate and teammate Donald F. McBeth.
School leaders describe the gift as transformative, allowing Kimball Union to think expansively about how athletics and wellness fit into a modern educational environment.
The Center is being designed to support contemporary training methods, injury prevention, recruitment, and holistic wellbeing, while remaining adaptable to future needs.
Multipurpose areas will allow the building to shift seamlessly from athletic use to mindfulness sessions, dance rehearsals, or all-school gatherings, reinforcing the idea that physical education and wellness are integral to academic and personal growth.
The impact of the gift extends beyond campus. In a small New Hampshire community, a project of this scale brings economic activity, long-term institutional stability, and facilities that may also support local partnerships and events.
More broadly, the gift highlights the pivotal role individual donors play in shaping independent education, particularly when philanthropic vision aligns closely with institutional values.
Morse, founder of North American Instrument Corporation and inventor of the widely used Morse Manifold medical device, has a long record of philanthropy alongside his late wife, Susan.
Their giving has transformed athletic programs at the University of Maine and supported major advances in healthcare, including a recent gift to the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute. Morse has also served as the Boston Red Sox’s vice chairman since 2004.
Today, Kimball Union Academy fields 19 varsity teams, with roughly 70 percent of students earning at least one varsity letter each year, alongside robust junior varsity and recreational offerings.
As planning and development move forward with the confidence of full funding, the Morse Athletics & Wellness Center is poised to stand as a lasting expression of Phil Morse’s faith in education that develops the whole person—and his conviction that the spaces where students train, connect, and challenge themselves are as formative as the classrooms where they study.