The US government does not like its employees to work more than 40 hours per week or to pay them overtime. What they like to do is pay you in Compensatory Time (i.e., “Comp Time”). This is basically getting paid in vacation leave instead of dollars. If you do not use it within a year, it pays out as extra pay or gets forfeited, depending on the office policy. If you take vacation, you are supposed to use “Comp Time” before vacation time. Of course, at the end of the year, you might have vacation time you have to forfeit. It is a little bit of a slimy way to avoid paying overtime at the time you worked extra. Some people like this, but John is not one of them.

Before leaving government service for the private sector many years ago, his team had a task where he was able to accrue about 400 hours of “Comp Time”. When he separated from the government, this paid out about 25% of his annual salary. The family already knew that his father had (probably) terminal cancer, so he set the money aside for a scholarship fund in his dad’s name. It has been invested (poorly for the first 15 years) for 20 years, so by the time we pass away, it might be enough to be a small scholarship endowment.

Before his dad died, John talked to him about what type of scholarship he would want to memorialize him. The main requirement was to fund the education of people that make things versus people that just think about things or manage people. John had been trying to identify a good way to go about this for the last five to tens year. We do not want to have to review 1,000 scholarship applications and prove we have an unbiased review process. Last year, John found pictures of his mom and dad at Clemson University, and he realized that his dad’s college would be a good place to investigate. Searching on the internet showed that the college is a well regarded university for engineering with a strong research program.

When you talk to charitable foundations about estate plans, they become your best friends, and they call to check on you periodically. We suspect that this is a fair weather friendship. Before you sign the paperwork, they do things like invite you for tours and give you coffee mugs and magnets. After the paperwork is signed, they will never call you again.

John drove the two hours to Clemson University to talk to their charitable foundation representatives and learn what paperwork they need to have to make sure they do what we want with the endowment. All this was conducted in the new Nieri Family Alumni and Visitors Center. The new visitor center houses the admissions, alumni, and charitable foundation offices along with enough parking, unlike the old visitor center.

The visitor center has an interesting machine in the lobby, but it really is more of a gimmick than anything amazing. You scan your class graduation ring at the machine, like you are the green lantern. It pops up a list of alumni for that year, and you can select the name you are looking for. If it is your entry, you can even store your signature with your entry.

They also have these goofy giant class rings out front for photo sessions because the old visitor center had this too. The class ring numbers can be swapped in and out for class reunions. You might think it will look odd with a shiny 1 and a faded 6, but no, they thought of that. They keep the spare numbers on the roof so that they weather the same as the numbers on the rings.

After the foundation meeting, it was lunch (on them!) at the down stairs cafe and a tour. (There is a map here, but you will have to “go back” to this page.) The campus is sprawling, and it has a golf course. The obvious solution is that the tour is conducted via golf cart. The old joke about “If you do not want to get run over, stay off the sidewalk!” applies here. The golf carts drive on the roads, on sidewalks, and off the curbs. I did not see any on the stairs or grass, so that might be safe. At one point, we came across a new road barricade, and the guide wondered whether that was specifically added to thwart the golf carts.

The first place we stopped was the building where John’s dad would have taken most of this classes, Riggs Hall. It is no longer “The Engineering” building. The engineering college now spans many buildings, and the mechanical engineering studies are in a new building, the Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building. Riggs Hall is now the Electrical and Computer Engineering studies.

They are pretty fanatical about their team colors and mascot. One company used this to their advantage to get a contract with the university.

And, it was a port-a-pot company with custom Clemson University orange units.

The guide talked about some of the changes to the university, but few of the details stuck. It was too much information to absorb while looking around the campus. Some of the information about where students hung around campus might have been relevant to John’s dad, but he was probably too busy with his classes and research to spend much extra time on campus. John was most interested in the places that he had pictures of from when his dad was there.

We passed by Tillman Hall from a few sides. It is one of the most famous buildings on campus. It is one of the few remaining original buildings, and it was built with convict labor. It was named after Benjamin Tillman, a staunch opponent of civil rights. (Yes, opponent.) It was named after him to honor his critical role as a founder and trustee of the college, not for his opposition to civil rights. The college changed the name back to “The Main Building” in 2020. Comparing the old and new picture, you can see how the closest tree to the right of the door has doubled in size.

The other building John has a picture of is “The 3 Million Dollar Library”. He assumes that it is half as bionic as “The 6 Million Dollar Man”. John did not get the same picture angle because we just stopped along the road to look at it. From Google street view (here), it looks like the picture might have been taken from the corner of Olin Hall, but that view is now covered by trees. The bottom left picture is the same side, but it is looking down the walkway shown in the old picture. You can see the top of the library between the trees and building on the right. The guide claimed that the school would like to replace the library to modernize for current needs, but it would be too costly.

We drove around much of the campus, but these areas had no real significance to John. As he goes through the photo albums, he might find other pictures and places to search for. He did not have time to search for the trailer park or the view across the lake.

These are some of the other areas on campus.

John was curious how the phone camera panorama mode would work riding in a golf cart pointing out the side. The answer is, not good. The bottom one looks passable, until you look closely at it.