YMCA to Officially Dedicate the Jim and Nancye Fitzpatrick Wellness Center on Saturday

The Princeton Family YMCA will hold a dedication and ribbon-cutting for the Jim and Nancye Fitzpatrick Wellness Center and the Buck Family Group Exercise Room on  Saturday, Sept. 14 beginning at 10:30 a.m. 

The event will take place at the YMCA's Dodge Gymnasium at 59 Paul Robeson Place. 

Guest speakers will include Rev. David Davis of Nassau Presbyterian Church, Princeton Council Member Lance Liverman, Princeton Public Schools Superintendent Judy Wilson, Rev. Wayne Meisel, founding president of the Bonner Foundation and Russell Best, YMCA intern, Wardlaw-Hartridge School. 

For more than a year, volunteers of the Princeton Family YMCA secretly raised capital funds to surprise Jim and Nancye Fitzpatrick, longtime Princeton residents with a deep and rich connection to the YMCA Movement, by naming the new Wellness Center in their honor.  This campaign was inspired in part by a $100,000 challenge grant made in 2008 by the late Alexander “Whip” K. Buck of Princeton, a former board member and supporter.  Since then, more than $200,000 has been raised for the project in honor of the Fitzpatricks. 

The renovation of the Athletic Building, called “Project Jumpstart,” has resulted in an updated Wellness Center to healthy living and physical activity for people of all ages and abilities. The facility now boasts a bright, modern and open space, with a centralized area with new cardio equipment, strength training and free weights. 

Jim Fitzpatrick often says that the YMCA was one of his greatest influences.  His father was a chaplain with the Y, his children participated in a variety of Y activities and programs as they grew up, and several of his grandchildren have attended and worked at YMCA resident camps.  Today, his son Hugh serves on the national YMCA of the USA board of directors.

A member of the Greatest Generation and now almost 90 years old, Jim served as a bomber pilot in World War II.  After being shot down over Germany, he became a prisoner-of-war and it was at the POW camp that he and his fellow soldiers were the beneficiaries of supplies from the YMCA.  For its part in the war effort, the YMCA provided items such as books, athletic equipment, musical instruments, and art supplies to give the prisoners ways to grow and learn, and build spirit, mind and body while faced with the uncertainty of their futures.  Jim credits the books he received about economics for capturing his interest and sparking a passion that ultimately put him on his career path in finance.  Following the war, Jim went on to get an education and eventually became the director of investments for the national YMCA Retirement Fund.  During his tenure, Jim facilitated unprecedented growth of the fund – helping thousands of YMCA employees maximize their savings for a secure retirement.

Nancye Fitzpatrick’s story is equally compelling.  An educator, community servant and extraordinary mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Nancye resumed her teaching career in Princeton in 1966 and taught English at John Witherspoon Middle School to generations of seventh and eighth-graders until 1982 when she retired. A devoted volunteer, she served on the board of directors of New Grange and became a mentor with the Trenton Afterschool Program in the late eighties.  She continues to meet monthly with one of her young charges, now a thirty-three year old woman.