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The Class of '54 during Commencement and Reunion Weekend last May. Photo by Frank Curran |
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As an undergraduate at the School of Management, Arnold Sheiffer (SMG’54) juggled several jobs. A janitor in the SMG building, he washed the floors and blackboards. On Saturday nights he pulled newspapers off the presses at the Boston Globe. At Christmas time he delivered mail, and during the summers he sold scratch sheets at Wonderland race track. In the end, he says, he still didn’t have “two pennies to rub together.”
Then he was summoned to the office of Dean William G. Sutcliffe, who told the nineteen-year-old Sheiffer he owed $800 in tuition for the previous two semesters. “What do you propose to do about it?” Sutcliffe asked. Sheiffer recited his list of jobs and watched as Sutcliffe closed his file and placed it in a drawer. He was certain he’d have to leave BU. Instead, the dean said, “Mr. Sheiffer, I’m sure when you get the money, you’ll discharge your obligation to the University.”
“I realized then that I was going to get a college education,” says Sheiffer, who went on to become a successful businessman, retiring last spring as chairman of Petry Media Corp. of New York. He paid the University back and also became a generous donor to the School of Management. “I really felt an obligation to Boston University,” he says.
That loyalty is shared by many of his classmates. In fact, the SMG Class of ’54 is the most generous in the school’s history, according to Peter Kelly, assistant dean for alumni relations and development. Members raised $720,000 for their fiftieth reunion last May and over the years have donated $16.1 million. Their family and friends have given $3.5 million, says Kelly. Of the fifty-six members who have given to the University, eight have made a gift of at least $100,000.
They’ve supported BU in other ways as well, serving on the University Board of Trustees and the SMG Alumni Board and as class agents. They’ve sent their children—thirty of them—to BU.
SMG Dean Louis Lataif (SMG’61, Hon’90) is grateful for their support. “This class has been remarkable in its loyalty and generosity to the school over the past decades,” he says. “They genuinely appreciate the importance of business education as a driver of new growth, new jobs, better products and services, and a better society overall.”
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| SMG Dean Louis Lataif (left) with Pamela and Arnold Sheiffer in the SMG conference room dedicated to the Class of '54. Photo by Frank Curran |
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The admiration is mutual. Sheiffer, who received an SMG Alumni Award for Distinguished Service at Reunion last May, says he’s impressed with how the school has changed under Lataif’s leadership. James Alexiou (SMG’54), cofounder and retired chairman of Irvine Sensors Corporation, has supported the University largely because of the work of Lataif and President Emeritus John Silber, who, he says, “resurrected” BU. “I heard him speak several times and I said, ‘This man is incredible.’ He did a wonderful job turning the whole University around.”
Alexiou adds that his class felt a responsibility to give. “I think we were all cognizant of the fact that we were not paying our way, that it cost more to educate us than we were paying,” he says.
Class spirit was also strong. “Because we were a commuter school, there were a lot of strong group relationships that formed through fraternities or sororities, ROTC, and clubs,” says Edward Hartnett (SMG’54), retired company group chairman at Johnson & Johnson and a member of the SMG Alumni Board. Nelson Mather (SMG’54) agrees. Besides ROTC, he says, many students also participated in military fraternal organizations like Arnold Air Society, Pershing Rifles, and Scabbard and Blade. “We really bonded,” he says.
But there are other reasons for the class loyalty and generosity. Hartnett says he and his classmates value the dedicated teaching and administrative staff. The class takes pride in the advances SMG has made under Lataif, Hartnett says, “in particular, the trends he’s led, setting the pace in cutting-edge approaches to business education—the executive programs, the outreach programs, the international programs. That’s kept us very involved and energized.”
Mather, a retired department manager for Allmerica, is class agent, a member of the SMG Alumni Board, and chairman of the forty-fifth and fiftieth reunion committees. The goal of the fiftieth, he says, was to raise $250,000 and name a conference room. “It worked out well,” he says by way of understatement. “I think we can do even more, and what I have in mind is to have the Class of ’54 fund a scholarship for SMG students at a future reunion.”
Mather says the reason for his support is simple. “I just love BU,” he says. “I always keep track of what it’s doing. I guess I’ve had that spirit for a long time.”
—Cynthia K. Buccini |
