A small student body and a rural setting makes Middlebury College in Vermont an attractive collegiate choice for many students, but at $71,830 a year (including $55,790 for tuition and $16,040 for room and board), it’s also one of the most expensive institutions of higher learning in the United States.

That said, administrators have embraced public art for their campus, and standing on “the quad” in front of Munroe Hall is a bronze sculpture of a dog catching a Frisbee that was erected in 1989.  “Frisbee” was sculpted by Patrick Villiers Farrow, and the dog has been identified by a few sites as a Great Dane.  Inscribed on the toe pads of the raised rear paw are the names of the grandsons of Gary Merrill, the donor.

The sculptor was the brother of Mia Farrow, and son of actress Maureen O’Sullivan and writer-director-producer John Villiers Farrow. Farrow grew up in Beverly Hills, spend time in Spain and England, had a few small roles in movies and TV, was a Merchant Marine in the Pacific,  and worked as an artist for a radio station. He moved to Vermont in 1964 and pursued his art which earned him many awards, but sadly, the talented and perhaps tortured artist died from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound in his art gallery in 2009.

As for the subject of the  300-pound statue, urban legend holds that throwing a disc (or in this case, a metal pie plate) was invented by a bunch of Middlebury students in the 50s. Others maintain that five Middlebury College students were the creators when they tossed their empty Frisbie Fruit Pie plates to each other while on a road trip to a fraternity convention in Nebraska in 1939. It’s true that the Frisbie Pie Company made pies that sold to many New England colleges, and leave it to college kids to challenge each other with a pie plate. What college that was, however, is open to debate. Yale College insists that a Yale undergraduate, Elihu Frisbie, grabbed a passing collection tray from the school chapel in 1820 and and flung it across campus thereby becoming the true inventor of the Frisbie (and winning glory for Yale). Princeton and Dartmouth students have made similar claims. Sorry, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth. The words “Frisbie’s Pies” was embossed in all the original pie tins and it’s from that name, “Frisbie” that the toy’s name was coined. In 1948, West Coast inventor Walter Fred Morrison made plastic versions of the old pie tin and marketed them as flying saucers. In 1957, Wham-O Manufacturing Co. began selling them under the registered trademark.  It’s probable that the real inventors were children in colonial times who played with flying wooden discs called ″sailors.″