“I would encourage everyone who has an IRA, and wants to engage in charitable giving, to consider using it.”
and Dr. Dick Briggs, Jr., C'56
Dr. Dick Briggs, Jr., C’56, P’86, P’91, GP’22, credits his decision to attend Sewanee with a single, momentous lunch conversation. As a high school student in Meridian, Mississippi headed to a SEC college on a tennis scholarship, he was invited to dine with his tennis friend, the Hon. Benjamin Franklin Cameron, C’1911, and Briggs’ tennis coach, Raymond Clegg. Briggs shares that the men simply told him they had chosen Sewanee for him, and they urged him to immediately complete the appropriate paperwork, which they had at the lunch. Briggs found this ringing endorsement hard to ignore—he applied, was admitted, and received a full scholarship. With further encouragement from his parents, he was soon Mountain-bound.
As Briggs describes it, his Sewanee experience was as fulfilling as his lunch companions knew it would be. “Sewanee helped me become a citizen of the world,” he explains. “I met a lot of people whose views were different from mine, but we could discuss them. That was valuable training for leadership positions later in life.”
Briggs excelled as captain of Dr. Gaston Bruton’s Sewanee tennis team and first trumpet in the University’s ROTC band. He also aimed high academically, graduating as salutatorian. As he recalls, he only earned one B during his University career, and his professor took him out for coffee to share the news. “That’s the way Sewanee was at the time,” he notes.
After graduation, Briggs enrolled in medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, having again earned a full scholarship. As he departed for St. Louis, he also converted from Methodist to Episcopalian—a change precipitated by his time on the Mountain.
Equipped with a four-year undergraduate education that he describes as “mind-boggling,” Briggs says he had no difficulty navigating medical school’s demands. “Sewanee prepared me for med school,” he notes, “but, more than that, prepared me to identify and attach new ideas and approaches and solutions to problems.”
It is this aptitude for critical thinking that, Briggs believes, distinguishes leaders—and, in his view, Sewanee’s mission is to shape students who will lead. “I have Sewanee friends and acquaintances who have enriched the lives of people throughout the world,” he says. Over his six decades of working as an academic Professor in Pulmonary and Critical Care at UAB School of Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama, Briggs explains, “I have educated hundreds of doctors, and I really prize the hard-working future leaders in every group, because those are the people who are going to influence the next generation and the one after that, and so on.”
Following the death of his wife, Susan, from lung cancer in 2006, Briggs and his children, Adrienne, C’86, Daniel, C’91, and Dow (a University of Virginia graduate) established a Sewanee scholarship in her honor, designating it for support of high-achieving students from Mississippi and Alabama. Starting with a $200,000 donation, the family set their sights on growing the scholarship to $1 million. In a conversation with Sewanee’s former Vice-Chancellor John McCardell and Associate Vice President for Advancement Robert Black, C’89, Briggs determined this funding goal could be met through regular contributions of IRA assets.
“To those who are older and have IRAs,” Briggs advises, “allowing the direct IRA contribution to charitable entities is one of the best things I have ever encountered.” Because people older than age 70 ½ can allocate significant IRA funds, especially required distributions, to charities without paying income taxes on their distributions, Briggs has been able to expand the Briggs Scholarship Fund relatively quickly. This year, the Briggs family met their $1 million benchmark and celebrated with a party.
Briggs notes that some people pass their IRAs on to children, but he says he enjoys seeing the effect of his family’s scholarship. “It’s a pleasurable thing, not only to finish what the kids and I started in Susan’s honor, but to meet the people who are benefitting from it,” he shares. He also sees the Briggs Scholarship Fund as a mechanism for expressing his gratitude to Sewanee. “I owe Sewanee a debt—they educated me,” he says. “If someone hadn’t wanted to support students, I would not have gotten to go to Sewanee and probably wouldn’t have gone to Wash U for med school.”
Reflecting on his philanthropy, Briggs adds, “I would encourage anyone who has an IRA, and wants to engage in charitable giving, to consider using it. I am very glad that John and Robert and I had that cup of coffee years ago. It has led to good things.” Given that Briggs’ Mountain experience started with a fateful lunch gathering, a meaningful coffee chat seems like a fitting Sewanee milestone.
