President of Olympic Fund Panel Resigns

Stanton Wheeler, president of the foundation responsible for distributing the $90-million Southern California share of the 1984 Olympic surplus, has resigned, effective in June, to return to his law professorship at Yale University.

Paul Ziffren, board chairman of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, said in a letter to directors this week that Wheeler’s departure after two years on the job comes as no surprise because he would have lost his tenured status had he stayed away from the university any longer.

But the foundation board, Ziffren said, had made Wheeler a generous offer for an extension of his contract, and as late as two weeks ago board members were expressing hopes that he would agree to stay on.

Wheeler, 56, told board members in a letter of his own: “After much agonizing . . . I have decided to return to the East Coast . . . a decision made in the gut, and who knows what decision is best? . . . I have appreciated the opportunity to help this unique organization get under way.”

Missed Academic Life

In a brief interview, Wheeler said he had enjoyed living in California, where he grew up, and working at the foundation. Although he did not discuss it, board members said Wheeler missed Yale academic life, his summer home in Vermont and another home in New York City and the time he had to pursue scholarly interests.

The resignation comes at a difficult moment for the young foundation, in the midst of a debate among its leaders on long-range plans.

A lengthy report submitted by its planning committee chairman, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt, advocating that the organization end its regular grant program to youth sports in 2004 and permanently endow a sports resource center it is building at its West Adams headquarters was deferred for further discussion at a board meeting in March.

Center for Studying Problems

Wheeler was associated with a move the foundation appeared to be making, and which Reinhardt supported, away from making so many grants to outside groups and toward initiating more programs of its own. Some of these would be directed at eventually making the foundation a center for study of sports problems, such as drugs, violence and payments to college athletes.

Another faction on the board, led by attorney John Argue, is more interested in pursuing the grants activity, which since 1985 has funneled $5.5 million to 120 different youth sports organizations throughout Southern California.

Reinhardt said in his planning report that the foundation staff had determined that the Southern California youth sports infrastructure could not easily absorb a higher level of grants than the foundation has been making.

Due to investments and the lower-than-expected dollar value of grants, the foundation has several million dollars more now than it did when it received its final distribution of the Olympic surplus.