The Lighter Side of Planned Giving: Personal Stories
Why I Hate Golf Carts
It was the Saturday of Commencement Weekend at the University of Pennsylvania. Fundraisers and alumni-relations staffers had begun escorting alumni through campus tours, seminars and reunion-check presentations early Friday morning, and would be on deck until multiple graduation ceremonies on Monday. As planned giving officer at the University, I was, of course, in charge of all 50th Reunion-and-older gatherings, and that morning my charges were scheduled to have lunch and then line up at the head of an alumni parade that would snake its way through the campus.
Just before the parade was to form up, I was given an extra assignment by the alumni director: President Hackney’s mother-in-law was visiting and wanted to see the festivities; could I pick her up at the president’s house and escort her to a viewing stand? My transportation would be one of the fleet of golf carts the University brought out to drive distinguished and/or hobbled alumni around campus during the weekend. OK, I said, I’ll take her, but I’m in a bit of a rush to get back to my parade duties here...I hustled over to the president’s house, met the president’s mother-in-law, and settled her in a golf cart.
Now is probably a good time to admit that I am not a golfer, and that I had never driven a golf cart before in my life. “Hey, I have a riding lawn mower at home,” I thought, “how hard can this be?”
The president’s mother-in-law was a Southern grande-dame, genteel, charming, and garrulous. Before I had even gotten the golf cart started she was offering courteous observations on the weather, the campus, and her son-in-law, each of which required a thoughtful response from me. Soon the cart was picking up speed across the parking lot which would lead us to the viewing stand.
We were about midway across the parking lot and my distinguished passenger was asking me, “Foster, Foster...are you one of the Virginia Fosters?” when I realized that I didn’t know where the brake pedal was on the golf cart. While struggling to make gracious comments about the beauties of Virginia horse country I was simultaneously watching a four-foot drop at the end of the parking lot race closer and closer and blindly pounding the floorboard of the golf cart trying to find the brake.
Nothing was working and we seemed to be tearing across the lot. Just as I was considering what the administrative discipline – not to mention the comments in my personnel file – would be for killing the president’s mother-in-law, I found the well-hidden brake pedal and jammed it down. We jolted to a stop just short of the precipice, I apologized to my passenger for the rough landing, and I hustled back to what I thought would be the safety of my golden-age tent.
It was not to be. Not twenty minutes after my own golf cart thriller we began to load the more feeble alumni into the carts that would chauffeur them along the parade route. I placed Mrs. B., a cantankerous 85-year-old who had spent the morning complaining that her hamburger was undercooked, her folding chair uncomfortable, and the ground outside the tent soggy, onto the backward-facing seat of a University golf cart. Wishing her bon voyage and privately hoping that she would be unable to attend next year’s reunion, I signaled the student driver to swing out into the parade.
The student must have been another non-golfer. She hit the accelerator smartly, the golf cart lurched ahead – and yup, Mrs. B. flew off her perch, landed on the brick pathway, and broke her 85-year-old leg.
...Luckily, Mrs. B. was not a bequest expectancy, so I was able in good conscience to leave her writhing on the ground and attend to the only alumni we considered worth bothering with at events – the donors!
