On what would have been her husband Louie’s 89th birthday, Marylaura Ramponi of Sequim gave a $500,000 check to Sequim School District on Oct. 17 to begin the process of designing phase one of a vocational center at Sequim High School.
She plans to give another $500,000 on her birthday — March 28, 2025 — to finalize her $1 million commitment made in July for the naming rights to the center. It’ll be called the Ramponi Center for Technical Excellence.
Ramponi presented the first donation to Sequim School District superintendent Regan Nickels at the Sequim Masonic Lodge’s coffee hour on Thursday. Ramponi, sitting with her husband’s personalized lodge mug, said Louie was a long-time Mason.
“I’m excited because I think I’m doing something good,” she said. “We chose to live here and I’m able to help. Lord knows we need this building.”
Nickels said Ramponi’s donation will help the center be part of a “new imagining of what Sequim High School’s campus can really be.”
According to Ned Floeter, director of Sequim School District’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, the center’s first phase will be about $4.05 million with a 10,000 square foot building with classroom space and two large open bays for industrial grade training on site for automotive and construction.
The school district received nearly $5 million from state legislators in the 2024 supplemental budget for the project.
It was initially imagined as a $15-$17.5 million facility.
Floeter said with Ramponi’s first donation, the district can move forward with designing and engineering while starting on the permitting process for the project.
Nickels said in July that Ramponi’s donation allows the school district to begin portions of the construction phase apart from the grant funding cycle.
Crews will tentatively break ground in spring or summer 2025 and complete it about a year later, Floeter said.
He continues to apply for grants to purchase equipment for the building.
School board staff said the center’s phase I is not tied financially to bond options being considered by the school district.
Ramponi committed the funds on July 15 at a school board meeting where board members unanimously accepted the donation.
Prior to moving to Sequim, she and Louie owned and operated a television store in Sonoma, California that they later sold to pursue their love of travel.
In the 1990s, they invested in Sequim real estate, and bought for themselves in the area in 1999 before immediately heading out to spend time in Alaska.
Ramponi said Louie valued vocational work, and following his passing in 2013, she wanted to help students considering trades. She connected with friend and financial advisor Phil Castell who helped her develop trade school scholarships along with the donation to the vocational center.
Photo courtesy Marylaura Ramponi Louie Ramponi, a TV store owner in California, bought land in Sequim in 1999 with his wife Marylaura after retiring, and after traveling, they moved permanently to the area. He died in 2013, and Marylaura established a vocational scholarship in his honor, and pledged $1 million to Sequim School District’s planned vocational building.
Sequim Gazette photo by Matthew Nash/ Marylaura Ramponi sat with her late husband Louie’s personalized Sequim Masonic Lodge mug at an Oct. 17 coffee meeting where she presented Sequim School District $500,000 for a new vocational building. Marylaura said the day was extra special because it was Louie’s 89th birthday.
