“The Endacott Family and the KU Retirees Club”

- A presentation by Prof. William J. Griffith, Oct. 8, 1998

The K.U. Retirees Club, in every sense, is a gift of the Endacott family. Paul Endacott conceived the idea, planned and described the project in exquisite detail, and he, and his wife Lucille, and the members of their families – individually and collectively through the Endacott Foundation – made multiple gifts that brought it to reality. To our best knowledge, it is an organization that is unique among universities in the country. We believe it to be appropriate, at least once a year, on a commemorative Founders Day, to remind ourselves, and to let our new members know how our Club came to be.

Paul Endacott, a K.U. honor student and basketball star, was an engineering graduate of 1923 who, along with other distinguished K.U. engineering graduates made their professional careers with the Phillips Petroleum Company. After graduation, service on the Boards of the Alumni Association and the Endowment Association, and as head of the Frank Phillips and Endacott Foundations, alerted him both to the degree to which educational institutions had come to depend on individual giving, and to the low level of alumni contributions to the support of K.U. That experience served to sharpen his perception of his own obligation, and that of all graduates to “pay at least partial restitution for having received an education which has contributed significantly toward their earning a livelihood,” and is determination to find a new and more effective device “capable of triggering support from a vastly higher percentage of former students.” His own feelings of gratitude and respect toward faculty and staff members who had “gone beyond the call of duty” to help him as an undergraduate, and the frequency he noted, during his term as national President of the K.U. Alumni Association, with which conversations at alumni gatherings turned to recollections of a favorite professor suggested a form that device might take.

Mr. Endacott began to consider a way to knit all these factors into a single project. In 1986 he made an initial gift that opened in the Endowment Association an independent account, later identified as the “Suspense Fund,” to finance a project to be defined later that would enable the University to provide a needed service that its regular budget could not support, and that would so clearly honor faculty and staff that grateful former students would be attracted to support it by gifts honoring individuals they greatly respected or for whom they felt particularly indebted. In the meantime, he sought a commanding site on which to construct a handsome building to house the project that would constantly remind and stimulate former students to make such “Expressions of Appreciation” as contributions to the University. The area now occupied by this building, then a temporary parking lot, was ultimately designated as the construction site.

Mr. Endacott then elaborated a plan for a Retired Faculty Center to be funded entirely by Endacott contributions. In February, 1977, he presented to the Endowment Association a sixty-page document, “A Proposal Relating to University of Kansas Retirees,” a copy of which can be consulted in the Retirees library. He stated principles and guidelines that had shaped the project, included a plan for the building and grounds on the portion of the selected site adjacent to the water tank, and described benefits that would accrue to the University from the project. It also elaborated a plan for “Expressions of Appreciation” to motivate alumni giving to provide funds for the maintenance of the structure, and to defray operating expenses of the retiree programs carried on within the building.

In September, 1977, Mr. Endacott learned that a projected Alumni Center would share the site designated for the retiree project. He had been unaware that such an arrangement was in prospect, but he “liked the idea of relating the proposed Alumni Center and the Faculty Center to each other.” Of the several possible structural relationships – two separate buildings, the two connected in some fashion, or the two occupying separate parts of the same building – after some exploration of other possibilities he chose occupation of separate parts of the same building. When informed, in December, that the University administration, the Endowment Association, and the Alumni Association had approved the Alumni Center project, and that a fund raising effort would be inaugurated, he released the “Suspense Fund” for the construction. Announcement of that gift gave the Alumni Association building campaign immediate early impetus. The building in which we meet and carry on our activities is the result.

It is highly appropriate that, in quarters provided by Endacott generosity, we express our gratitude to the family that made our Club possible. We recognize that the opportunities it provides, otherwise impossible, enable K.U. retirees to lead fuller and more rewarding lives.