“When I came up to Sewanee as a freshman, I was never homesick a day in my life—not once. I wanted to be there so badly.”
When Bill Skaggs, C’76, reflects on the ways Sewanee has shaped each season of his life, he sees a clear throughline—a narrative slam dunk, you might call it. “Basketball is the tie that binds this whole thing together,” he says. Now living in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was born and raised, Skaggs attends Sewanee basketball games anytime his schedule permits. For more than 20 years, he has also helped recruit promising athletes for the University’s men’s and women’s teams, and last year he accompanied the men’s team on a summer excursion to Italy. Skaggs points out that the timing of this international trip was particularly meaningful to him—50 years earlier, during his freshman year at Sewanee, he traveled to Mexico as a basketball player. “I’d never flown on a plane before,” he says. “We went for two weeks and played six games. Trip of a lifetime.” The 2023 trip to Italy was even more gratifying to Skaggs for a different reason. “It was wonderful getting to know the young men on our current team, and to see the caliber of student-athlete that our university continues to attract.”
Skaggs has been a dedicated Sewanee donor for decades, supporting the Sewanee Fund, scholarships, and, perhaps not surprisingly, Sewanee athletics. Recently, he established the William C. Skaggs III, C’76, Scholarship Fund, which provides need-based support to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, with a preference for those from the Knoxville area. While Sewanee does not offer athletic scholarships, Skaggs says he hopes his endowed scholarship will raise the University’s profile among outstanding Knoxville-area high school athletes.
Skaggs has also included an unrestricted bequest to Sewanee in his will, honoring both his time on the Mountain and, he says, the high value he places on education. “Bill’s Sewanee philanthropy is a perfect example of a gift that keeps on giving,” says Director of Gift and Estate Planning Allison Cardwell. “His endowed scholarship will benefit our students both immediately and in the future, and his bequest will strengthen Sewanee’s mission in perpetuity. It’s a remarkable testament to his generosity and to the enduring impact of the Sewanee experience.”
Skaggs discovered Sewanee long before he began filling out college applications. In his youth, he attended Camp Mountain Lake, an all-boys camp in Tracy City, Tennessee, founded by George L. Reynolds, P’66, a former Sewanee resident. In 1970, the camp was purchased by Horace Moore Jr., P’84, who coached a wide range of varsity sports over 32 years at the University. “Coach Moore is one of those people—it’s very clichéd to say, but he was like a father and a mentor to me,” Skaggs says.
One of Skaggs’ camp counselors, Wayland Long, C’71, also made a strong impression. “He was a star Sewanee basketball player—a tall, 6’8” guy. I idolized him a little bit.” That same summer, in 1969, Skaggs caught the eye of another counselor at the camp, Dave Shepherd. “Dave was the basketball and tennis coach at Sewanee Academy at the time, and he tried to convince me to come play basketball for him. I was just a sophomore in high school and I did not want to leave my buddies, so I stayed in Knoxville.” However, when the time came to consider colleges, “I was ready for Sewanee,” Skaggs says. “I knew where I wanted to go.”
Basketball quickly took a front-and-center position in Skaggs’ campus experience. During his freshman and sophomore years, he participated as a player. This included being a member of the 1973 team, which was enshrined in the Sewanee Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013. Then, he transitioned to serving as the student director of sports information for basketball, acting as a liaison between the athletic department and media outlets in Chattanooga and Nashville. In this role, he continued to travel with the men’s basketball team, and he occasionally roomed with the team’s student trainer—a focused upperclassman who later excelled in a number of University leadership positions. “His name was Rob Pearigen, [C’76, P’14, P’17],” Skaggs says.
Despite not playing for the Tigers after his sophomore season, Skaggs still spent a good bit of time on the court during his final two years on the Mountain. In 1975, he was part of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon team that produced an undefeated (12-0) season, and won the intramural "A" League championship. This team also featured Rhea Bowden, C'76; Joe DeLozier, C'77; and Player of the Year Dudley West, C'77, P'09, P'15. "If we weren't the greatest intramural team in Sewanee history, we were certainly the tallest," Skaggs says.
There’s one competitive event Skaggs regrets observing as a student—a Saturday evening food riot in Gailor Hall. “Saturday night was always steak night, and for some reason, a group decided they were going to [stage] a food riot,” he says.
“I had nothing to do with starting it, but I was in the middle of it.” The messy skirmish took a dangerous turn when students started throwing plates and glasses. “I had on khakis but no socks, and when I looked down, my left ankle was bleeding,” Skaggs recalls. A Nov. 13, 1975, feature in The Sewanee Purple, written by David Donaldson, C’76, paints the riot in a more glowing light. Rarely, Donaldson noted, “did we feel such ecstatic shivers of freedom as we did when we donned our little cellophane uniforms and hurled English peas at our arch-opponent.”
After earning a B.A. in English, Skaggs briefly worked for a family-owned furniture company before enrolling in the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s graduate business program. “There’s no question that my Sewanee degree helped me in my studies later,” he says. In 1988, he received an MBA and started a 20-year career in finance and management at Knoxville Glove Company. Prior to his retirement in 2022, he worked in the Knox County Clerk’s office for 14 years.
Even though Skaggs had been following the Tigers since his graduation, two events in the early 2000s led him to become more directly involved with Sewanee basketball. In 2001, Trey Lefler, C’04, son of good friend and former teammate Jack Lefler, C’74, transferred to Sewanee to play for the Tigers.
Then, in the summer of 2003, former teammate Dickie McCarthy, C’77, was hired as women’s basketball coach. Rekindling his friendship with McCarthy quickly led to Skaggs attempting to recruit student-athletes to play for McCarthy’s program. Skaggs says this experience weighed significantly in his decision to establish a scholarship fund, as he sometimes observed talented high school athletes apply to Sewanee but ultimately enroll elsewhere due to financial aid considerations.
“I created the scholarship so that any student from the Knoxville area who might have extra financial need can come to Sewanee.”
Skaggs is also an avid supporter of the Tigers track and field program. “I ran track in high school and really loved the sport,” he says, noting that he is now certified as a USA Track and Field (USATF) official and has been officiating Sewanee’s home meets since 2002. “It’s one more excuse to come to the Mountain.” Skaggs will be involved when Sewanee hosts the SAA outdoor championships in April of 2025 at the newly renovated Coughlan Track.
In addition to attending athletic events on the Domain, Skaggs says he enjoys coming to campus for celebrations like the Fourth of July and the annual Festival of Lessons and Carols. In January 2024, he took part in the University’s 100 Years of Basketball festivities, and in July he had a mini-reunion with several basketball teammates, also on the Mountain.
This smaller gathering was spearheaded by Eddie Krenson, C’76, P’03, and was intended primarily to honor Coach Mac Petty, who was head men’s basketball coach at the University from 1973 to 1976 and went on to coach for 35 seasons at Wabash College, earning a place in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Petty and his wife, Gloria, were prevented from attending the 100 Years celebration due to a major snowstorm. During a dinner reception at McGriff Alumni House, several of Skaggs’ teammates shared stories about their time with Coach Petty. “He got emotional,” Skaggs says, “because he’s just that kind of guy. It was very touching.”
Another highlight of Skaggs’ involvement with Sewanee, he says, has been joining in a gowning ceremony as a special guest of his cousin, Janie Coleman Beck, C’06. “In the fall of 2004, [Beck] earned her gown, and she asked me to gown her. For a Sewanee student, that’s as good as it gets—it’s a very sentimental thing. I told her she couldn’t do anything nicer for me than that.”
If Skaggs now takes every opportunity to visit the Domain, his loyalty is a throwback to his college days, when he rarely strayed far from campus. “As a student, I just loved being on the Mountain,” he says. “I’d go home for Tennessee football games, or maybe go with friends to Nashville, but not often.” Nostalgia for the comforts of city life, he says, wasn’t an issue. “When I came up to Sewanee as a freshman, I was never homesick a day in my life—not once. I wanted to be there so badly. It’s kind of the same way for me now, 48 years after graduation. Not much has changed.”
