Word: ponderer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ponder, brought up in a family of 14 children on an Oklahoma farm, was introduced to education in the 1930s in a segregated country school in which two teachers taught eight grades. Fifty years later, he had a doctorate in economics from Ohio State University under his belt and was a director of the United Negro College Fund. Riding high in academic circles as the man who had built the endowment of South Carolina's Benedict College from an inconsequential sum to $20 million, Ponder came to tackle Fisk. He found a faculty that deserved medals for even bothering...
...Ponder says he came to the task with a lot on his mind and not enough time to make a list of priorities. Like Mitchell, he was given comfort by the school's standing. "Academically, this institution had never been in trouble. If you have credibility, the credentials, you can get the money." Looking at the ledgers, he found that his predecessors had been covering shortfalls by reaching into the endowment, reducing it from a high of $14 million in 1968 down to the present $3 million. "There was no incentive to stop spending...
Looking into the cellar, Ponder found a boiler that needed $350,000 in repairs just to pass municipal inspection. He called in an engineer from the Fisk class of '57, Vander Harris, a maintenance genius he had known in South Carolina. Harris got the boiler going for $60,000. To this day, Harris attends to the nuts and bolts of running Fisk. "We can't afford thermostats," he was saying recently. "Either the heat is on or off. You just have to figure out the retention rate of your buildings." Always looking for ways to save a buck, Harris...
While Harris was patching the place up, Ponder was looking for benefactors and credit. He was telling companies that had been burned by Fisk, "If all our creditors got a judgment against us today, we'd close down and nobody would get any money. Give us six months, twelve months, 18 months." He was also saying, "Keep working for us. We will pay for everything from this day forward, and we won't forget the back bills...
...while, Ponder furiously searched for money. His pitch was that he would run Fisk as a business, in the black. In time he got local banks, corporations and his alumni association on the bandwagon, as well as a deeply concerned Nashville businessman, Ben Rechter, whose support at last look came to half a million dollars. At the beginning of 1986 the debt was down to $890,000. Ponder pledges that it will be erased by commencement this spring...