When Jim Haslam was a student at the University of Tennessee he used to sit on a wall on Cumberland Avenue watching cars go by and wishing he had one.

Today, Haslam can afford a fleet of cars and UT will announce that he and his wife, Natalie, are giving the university the largest gift ever received from individuals.



The $32.5 million will be split among academic and athletic programs from one end of UT's campus to the other with the largest portion going to academics.

"People think I'm closely associated with athletics, which I am," Jim Haslam said Wednesday, "but 70 percent of this is going to academics and that's by choice, not by chance. A university is all about academics."

The two largest beneficiaries of the Haslams' giving are the two colleges they attended before graduating from UT in 1952.

The College of Arts & Sciences will receive $10 million, while the College of Business Administration will get $7.5 million.

Natalie Haslam majored in French and earned a bachelor of arts in liberal arts — now the College of Arts & Sciences — while Jim Haslam earned a degree in business administration.

"Frankly I was shocked about the amount going to the College of Liberal Arts (but) I was so happy," Natalie Haslam said.

The couple said they wanted to give something back to the school they say gave them so much. They talked about the gift in an interview in Jim Haslam's office at the Pilot Corp. headquarters.

They started off by joking with each other.

"Are you sitting up straight?" Natalie Haslam asked her husband.

He replied, "They're recording everything Natalie, so be good."

"Well I don't want to look 10 feet taller than you," she said.

Haslam said the couple wants the gift to help UT reach its potential.

"The big thing we want to say is it's not about us," Jim Haslam said. "It's about the university, it's tremendous potential, the need for people to step up and contribute to the university and the fact that (it) has done so much to help us to achieve whatever success we've had."

Jim Haslam was the captain of UT's football team in 1952, playing for Gen. Robert R. Neyland before becoming an Army officer and later starting Pilot Corp. in 1958 with a single gasoline station in Gate City, Va.

Today, Pilot is one of the largest privately held businesses in the United States.

The couple has donated millions of dollars to UT and other area organizations over the years. They recently gave $1 million to East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

On Wednesday, both tried to keep the focus on UT and what the gift will do for it.

"It's about the university, about our hopes and dreams for making it a world-class university," Haslam said. "It's a very fine university but it can be so much better."

While the couple said they wanted to give something back to UT, there is another reason the Haslams made the gift.

It's to encourage others to give.

The timing of the donation is tied to UT's upcoming $1 billion "Campaign for Tennessee" capital campaign.

"Every campaign needs a lead gift, whatever the campaign is," Natalie Haslam said.

"We are delighted to do it," her husband added.

The gift has been in the works for about two years, and it was fashioned in conversations between UT and the Haslams.

"I think we knew we wanted to put some in arts and sciences, some in business, some in athletics and some in the Baker Center," Jim Haslam said. "They (UT) came up with the specific program."

Giving $32.5 million to the university is not something they could have envisioned in the late 1940s when they arrived as freshmen at post-war UT.

Jim Haslam was a football star from St. Petersburg, Fla., where his father had retired from the military. Natalie Leach was the daughter of the first ophthalmologist in Knoxville and had grown up here.

After graduation Haslam became an Army officer serving in Korea.

When he returned to Tennessee — he liked it here — he had three options: coaching high school football, working in the fledgling television industry or going to work for a small oil company.

The high school job wouldn't start for months, and Haslam was worried about the future of television "I thought 'Gosh, that's a new industry'."

He went into oil.

Haslam said he started giving back to the community when Max Friedman, a Knoxville jeweler, called him and asked Haslam to take part in the Community Chest, a sort of forerunner of the United Way.

Haslam told Friedman he had just started a business, had three young children at home and just didn't have time to do it.

Friedman asked Haslam who bought his products.

When Haslam replied it was people in Knoxville, Friedman told him, "Son, you have to pay the rent."

It hit Haslam that Friedman was right, and "I just felt like it was the thing to do."

The Haslams have been involved together in dozens of charitable efforts for the past 30 years.

They don't intend to stop anytime soon.

"I'll put it this way, all the things we have done in the community, we are the ones who are ahead," Jim Haslam said. "You get so much out of doing things for other people."

Randy Kenner may be reached at 865-342-6305.