The late Richard and Melissa Costello of Gorham, longtime faculty members, leave the university its largest bequest ever.

The University of Southern Maine announced Tuesday a $1,650,000 gift has been left to the college by a late couple who had been an institution as faculty members on the Gorham campus.

Richard “Doc” Costello and his wife, Melissa Costello, who both had long careers with the university and its forerunner, Gorham State Teachers College, left the university the hefty endowment.

Glenn Cummings, university president, surrounded by university athletes and with a painting of the Costello couple in the background, announced the huge gift on the Gorham campus Tuesday.

“It’s the largest estate gift in USM’s history,” Cummings told a gathering in the Alumni Reception Hall in the Costello Sports Complex.

Cummings said Richard and Melissa Costello had devoted almost every hour of their lives to the university.

Richard Costello, who died in 2008, was an instructor, athletic director and a legendary coach at the university, which evolved from Gorham State Teachers College. Melissa (Dunn) Costello, who died in 2013, graduated from Gorham State in 1952 and later became a professor there. She once chaired the School of Education.

Richard and Melissa Costello both retired from the university in 1990. They had no children.

According to Bob Stein, the university spokesman, no one is certain how the Costellos accumulated their wealth, but the speculation is that they were very frugal.

“They were tremendous people,” Al Bean, the university athletic director who succeeded Richard Costello, said Tuesday.

“This building was named after Dick Costello,” Cummings said.

The Costello Sports Complex includes the field house, Hill Gym, athletic offices and ice arena that Cummings described as the only Olympic-sized ice arena in the state. After the ceremony, Cummings said the sports complex needs an energy upgrade and some maintenance.

George N. Campbell Jr., president of the University of Southern Maine Foundation, said the funds would help refurbish the sports complex.

“What great, exciting news,” Campbell said about the announcement.

Bruce Roullard, a member of the university’s Athletic Advisory Council, as well as a Gorham town councilor, called the gift “wonderful news. They were very generous people.”

A legend in athletics, Richard Costello became the only head coach in the National Collegiate Athletic Association to record 200 wins in both men’s and women’s basketball.

Two of his standout basketball players and coaching prote?ge?s remembered Costello this week.

“Playing for Dick was a pleasure, not because he was a mastermind of strategy, nor did he pretend to be, but because he truly cared about every one of his players,” Rick Simonds said in an email to the American Journal.

Simonds, who has coached basketball at Saint Joseph’s College in Windham and Bonny Eagle High School, said every one of Costello’s players knew he cared.

“He not only cared while you played for him either, but for evermore,” Simonds said.

Ken Knapton of Westbrook played basketball four years for Costello at Gorham State and also was one of Costello’s health and physical education students.

Knapton, who coached basketball in the Westbrook school system and is well known for mentoring youth, described Costello as “very caring” and worked his players hard in practice.

“A really nice guy,” Knapton recalled this week.

According to the university, Costello and his wife met in 1953 when they were both faculty members at the college. They married three years later and bought a home on Flaggy Meadow Road, a short walk from the Gorham campus.

The university said that the Costellos “enriched the lives of countless students.”

Knapton recalled Melissa Costello when she was his fourth-grade teacher at the town’s former Campus School, which was across School Street from the college. Knapton, a Gorham native, said she was then Miss Dunn.

“She was a very nice lady,” Knapton said.

The Costellos’ generosity did not catch Simonds off guard.

“It is not surprising that he is bequeathing money to the school that he loved, because he bequeathed love, kindness and wisdom to all that he came in contact with,” Simonds said.

University of Southern Maine President Glenn Cummings on Tuesday on the Gorham campus announces that the late couple Richard and Melissa Costello, who were retired faculty members, left the university $1.65 million. Staff photo by Robert Lowell