FEBRUARY/MARCH 2000

ROBERT DEDMAN

DONORS

By Jan Pudlow
Special to the Florida State Times

Robert Dedman was a cotton-picking, huckleberry-gathering 10-year-old boy from Arkansas wearing pasteboard-soled shoes when his family moved to Dallas during the Great Depression.

He got his first glimpse of city wealth when his newspaper delivery route took him to the front doors of the ritzy Melrose Hotel of Cedar Springs, where the rich and famous gathered. One day, he dreamed, he'd be one of them.

His dream came true. Today, Robert H. Dedman is the 73-year-old chairman of the board of a billion-dollar-a-year golf club and resort corporation, ClubCorp International. He's an amiable guy who spoils his grandchildren, recites poetry, offers business advice in catchy phrases, tells corny jokes, tries to play tennis or golf every day and enjoys giving his money away.

To American Benefactor magazine, he is 25th on a list of the 100 most generous people in the country.
To GolfDigest magazine, he's "The Richest Man in Golf."

 To FSU's College of Business, he is the giver of the most money in history.

Adding to their long list of philanthropic deeds that total more than $100 million, Robert and Nancy Dedman recently gave $7 million to establish the Dedman Endowment in Hospitality, to support the hospitality and professional golf management programs.

Tthe Dedmans had already given FSU $1.5 million for construction of the University Center, where the University Center Club is counted among ClubCorp's clubs and offers students hands-on experience serving food and drinks in a stately wood-paneled setting.
"Some say, 'Give until it hurts.' I say, 'Give until it feels good," Dedman wrote in his business-motivational memoir, "King of Clubs."

He's pledged to give the proceeds from the sale of his book to his favorite charities, including FSU.
As Dedman likes to say,"They don't put luggage racks on hearses, for good reason."

He and his wife, Nancy, have given lots of money to universities - most notably a $56-million endowment to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he received his master's of law, and enough money to finance 800 Dedman Merit Scholars at The University of Texas at Austin.

"Someone once told me, if you invest in a crop like corn or cotton, you invest for a year," Dedman recalls. "When you invest in oil or cattle or timber, you invest for several years. When you invest in education, you invest forever."
Dedman has four college degrees from SMU and UT. By the time he was 23, he was a partner in his own law firm.
He went to night school to get his master's in law, while building a practice that boasted oil baron H.L. Hunt as a big client. And for young Dedman, Hunt was a dramatic mentor, a flamboyant example of entrepreneurial enormity, a businessman pulling in a million bucks a week.

By the time he was 31, Dedman went from legal advisor to investors to principal investor. Building his first country club in Dallas, he founded Country Clubs Inc. The family business now run by his son, Bob, is called ClubCorp International, where 230 properties on five continents earn $1.4 billion a year.

Today, ClubCorp has 23,000 employees who serve 195,044 members.

The Dedmans are giving FSU Dedman Distinguished Professors in hospitality, service management and professional golf management (PGM).

The FSU - ClubCorp connection is Jim Riscigno, a 1966 graduate of FSU's hospitality school, who is now executive vice president of ClubCorp.

Today, Riscigno said, more than 100 FSU graduates work for ClubCorp.
"Of all the schools that offer business hospitality curriculums in the United States, FSU has been the school that seems to have turned out the type of students and graduates that work out well," Riscigno says.
While ClubCorp owns the business of the University Club, Seminole Boosters and FSU built the facility and together share in the profits.

When Dedman talks about his resort and club business, he speaks passionately about a mission to pamper the country club set, a group he gladly belongs to himself.
Dedman is big on living large, no matter how much money a person has. One of his favorite sayings is the Latin "Carpe diem," or "Seize the Day."

"In other words, go for it. Live a lot. Live out loud. Have a joy of living," Dedman writes in his memoirs. "People will notice. They may not be able to pinpoint precisely what makes you different, just that you are."

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