Stewards of Education

UT and The Saunders Foundation — a partnership for a smarter city

By Holly Newman | Photograph by Jessica Leigh

The Saunders Foundation board, front row, from left: George Howell, Kathleen Belmonte, Solon O’Neal, Susan Thompson and Fred Dobbins with Renée Vaughn and President Vaughn.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll see the name everywhere.

Saunders. The name shows up on signs and plaques all over Tampa — at the zoo, the history center, museums, performing arts venues, and especially at The University of Tampa.

And yet, George Howell, the new president, CEO and director of The Saunders Foundation, says the foundation is not looking for publicity. Instead, he says, the foundation is working every day to honor the legacy of William and Ruby Lee Saunders, true Tampa pioneers and advocates for education.

William and Ruby Lee were businesspeople. William Saunders arrived in Tampa, population 100,000, in early 1929, just before the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression. He first worked in the small-loan business, a field “seemingly made for the times,” according to a book about his and Ruby Lee’s lives, Solid Foundation, by Rodney Kite-Powell and published last year by The University of Tampa Press.

Ruby Lee had wanted to take business administration courses at Hollins College (now University) in Virginia when she was a student there, but those classes were not available to women. Still, after William and Ruby Lee were married in 1946, when he was 66 and she 51, Ruby Lee became a “full partner” in both William’s personal and professional lives, according to the book.

Only a little more is known about them as people. They liked to travel; they went to church; William, especially, was involved in service and social clubs like the Elks, Shriners and Masons. Ruby Lee liked music. William graduated from Virginia Tech and had been married and divorced before. Neither had children.

What is well-established and widely known is this: They came to Tampa when it was young and then spent their marriage starting, growing and selling financial services companies that helped build Tampa into a thriving city.

Thanks to the foundation they left behind, their energy and ambition are still felt today, decades after their deaths.

PRIORITIZING LEARNING

The Saunders Foundation was established in 1956, when William and Ruby Lee were still working, primarily to assist with the education of the children of their Union Finance Corporation employees.

“Education was always at the top of their list,” said Solon O’Neal, who was William and Ruby Lee’s certified public accountant before serving on The Saunders Foundation's board of directors for 50 years. He recently stepped down as president but is still on the board.

“I think they thought they were fortunate to have received an education themselves, in their youth, when times were very hard and education was difficult to obtain. It was a continuing interest of theirs that young people should have educational opportunities,” he said.

It wasn’t long before the foundation made its first gift to The University of Tampa, in 1962.

“I’m not entirely sure what attracted them initially to The University of Tampa,” Howell said, “but Mrs. Saunders valued a liberal arts education, and at the time, UT was the only place in town to get one.”

The University was just over 30 years old then and was working to distinguish itself in a city that had a new state-sponsored university in USF. Beyond Plant Hall, only a few scattered buildings graced the UT campus.

“The facilities were quite limited, to say the least, and in no way — no way — compare to today,” O’Neal said, chuckling at the memory of those early years.

Over time, Saunders Foundation gifts and personal donations from William and Ruby Lee have made their mark across campus. An early project was the renovation of the Virginia Room, a classroom in Plant Hall. The most recent is the Saunders Foundation Art Gallery, a showcase space on the first floor of the Ferman Center for the Arts.

Others include the lobby of Austin residence hall, the Saunders Writing Center, and contributions to the nursing skills and simulation lab and Martinez Athletics Center.

“If you look at the history and growth of UT, The Saunders Foundation has been an integral part of UT’s progress since the 1960s,” said UT President Ronald Vaughn. “Partnerships with organizations like The Saunders Foundation help UT continue to push forward and keep its momentum to create a bolder and stronger university.”

While capital projects are the most visible, Saunders donations are busy behind the scenes at UT, as well. The foundation has established two scholarships, one general and one named for longtime Saunders Foundation board member Jim Kelly, a 1958 UT graduate and former University employee.

“Mr. Saunders, especially, was looking for intelligent and motivated people who couldn’t afford it, and he wanted to give them a shot, and Mrs. Saunders had similar feelings,” Howell said.

Howell also said that William and Ruby Lee admired the curriculum and focus of the University. Beyond that, he said, “They were interested in kids getting a cultural education.”

TAMPA INSTITUTIONS

Hollins and Virginia Tech also benefit from Saunders-funded scholarships, but overall, The Saunders Foundation sticks close to home. The foundation has supported more than 250 organizations, overwhelmingly in the Tampa Bay area, and has given away $25 million since the foundation became fully funded following William Saunders’ death in 1977. (Ruby Lee died in 1970.)

The foundation’s reach is sometimes broader than strict education, as it occasionally branches into cultural organizations, healthcare and community development, but even those ventures tend to lean toward the educational components of whatever the project might be. For example, the foundation sponsored the planetarium at MOSI and classroom space at the Florida Aquarium.

Howell said he thought William and Ruby Lee would be especially pleased about the foundation’s involvement in Junior Achievement, which teaches financial literacy, entrepreneurship and career readiness, among other real-life skills.

Ruby Lee and William Saunders valued a liberal arts education, much to the benefit of The University of Tampa and its students. Their first gift to the University was in 1962. Photograph: Courtesy of the Saunders Foundation

It’s that larger view of education that O’Neal says he sees in The University of Tampa, and that is among the reasons why UT remains of great interest to the foundation. When asked what UT is doing right, right now, he said: “I think it’s the recognition of what a student needs in today’s culture, in today’s environment.

“Obviously, there’s pure education, the ABCs,” he continued, “but, in addition, it’s participation or the expectation that the students will participate in community activities, will develop leadership skills, will participate in a lot of different organizations. It’s a total educational process so that when students graduate, they are prepared to move into the workforce and take their place as part of the community.

“The other thing, too, is a recognition of changing demands of the marketplace in the sense of students’ skills,” and he specifically mentioned UT’s nursing program.

“The nursing program at the University certainly meets really glaring needs today,” he said.

While the foundation is experiencing a changing of the guard with Howell having assumed the board’s leadership role from O’Neal in March 2022, both men said they expect no big changes. Stability has served the foundation well, they said.

“I would hope the foundation goes forward just as it has in the past,” O’Neal said. “Culture changes and needs change, and as a foundation, we’ll need to address those things. But hopefully, we can continue to contribute just as we have.”