A celebration of Thomas Sutherland's life will be held this weekend at Colorado State University. The memorial is 2-3 p.m. Saturday in the Lory Student Center Ballroom on the CSU Campus in Fort Collins.

The event is open to the public and will highlight Sutherland's Scottish heritage with pipe and fiddle music, a choir and the reading of poems by Robert Burns. Parking is available in the north parking lot at CSU as well as west of the Morgan Library.

Sutherland taught at CSU for 26 years before serving as dean of agriculture and food science at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, where he was captured by Islamic militants and held hostage for 6 years.

Tom and Jean Sutherland are longtime community leaders and volunteers. They established the Sutherland Family Foundation, which has supported many Fort Collins nonprofits including the Food Bank of Larimer County, Bas Bleu Theatre, and community radio. They have also been generous supporters of the Colorado Boys Ranch, CSU agricultural scholarships, the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, and Crossroads Safehouse.

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