“I know how hard it is when you’re worried about being able to pay for whatever is coming up,” said Jay Solomon, ’61. “Dollars were always short for me. I was fortunate to be able to find jobs to take care of that, but that doesn’t always happen. I identify with the ‘Last Dollar Scholarship’ idea – to be able to help students who have the kind of pressure like I did.”
Jay will be funding the The Jay R. and Joan C. Solomon Endowed Last Dollar Scholarship through a planned gift in his estate plan. In addition to that, Jay is also making an immediate impact by creating a current endowment through cash and an appreciated stock transfer. Through this current endowment, the first scholarship can hopefully be awarded as early as spring 2021. Not only does this provide current support for students, the stock transfer also eliminated some capital gains tax for Jay.
“I feel like we’re in the worst of modern times,” Jay said. “Now more than ever, so many students need immediate help. I wanted to make an impact and not wait until I wasn’t around to see it happen.”
“Both my late wife Joanie and I always felt we were very fortunate in life,” Jay continued. “We had good families who were supportive and were both fortunate in our professional lives to have things go our way a number of times. Part of that is luck; you make your own luck sometimes. But we wanted to give back.”
“We worked hard and saved to build a nest egg,” Jay continued, “but we never expected to get to a point where we could take care of our family and also afford to do what we’re doing now. I say ‘we’ because Joanie worked as hard as I did as a nurse. I lost her two years ago, but this isn’t all about me; I wanted it to be something that would recognize Joanie as well, because I know she would love this. It’s our way of appreciating what we achieved, in a way that will help others.”
Looking back, Jay remembers that his journey at ϳԹ almost didn’t happen.
“I never dreamed of going to college,” Jay said. “No one in my family had ever gone, my grades in high school were average at best, and my family wasn’t in a financial position to afford tuition. But I saw all my friends making plans for college, and that sparked a thought of, ‘what if?’”
After getting a job as a union road crew worker near his hometown of Canton, Ohio and earning $2.50 an hour all summer after high school graduation, he realized college was something he might be able to pay for himself. So, he saved all summer and chose a university.
“ϳԹ was 30 miles away – within hitchhiking distance,” Jay said. “In high school, the one thing I did pretty well at was working for the school newspaper, and I knew ϳԹ had a very good journalism program. I had to take an admissions test to get in, and I didn’t know if that would go well as I had never taken any advanced math in high school. I don’t know how, but I got through the math and passed the admissions test.”
As a freshman on campus, Jay wore the traditional blue and gold freshman beanie, the “DINK,” and he had upperclassmen show him around. One of those students told Jay she liked his voice and that he should consider taking broadcast journalism classes and working at the campus radio station. As radio was very important in those days, the seed was planted.
Jay couldn’t stay in the dorms because of the expense, so he rented a room in a boarding house on Depeyster Street, run by Ma Schrader. He needed a job to keep paying tuition, and he first worked as a “soda jerk” at the student union. When he needed something steadier, he found a job at a grocery store within walking distance of his boarding house and campus. Jay stayed at this job for the next two years, and it helped him pay tuition.
Jay did well academically the first quarter, then he had to take a foreign language class. That class knocked him down… but he found a way to get back up and keep going.
“I realized I needed to learn how to study,” Jay said, “so I did. And I was fortunate to have good professors who were patient with me. I worked hard and got my grades back up.”
“I ended up being elected into the Blue Key Honor Society,” Jay said. “I was on the Dean’s list for my last six or seven quarters, and for me that was a remarkable achievement. ϳԹ took me from a kid who just made it through high school to one who could achieve something like this. I still have my cane – the symbol of the Blue Key club. It remains a constant reminder in my life that if I work hard and always try to do the right thing, good things happen.”
When he got back on track academically, the seed planted by the upperclassman had stayed with Jay, and he ended up volunteering at the student radio station.
“New students had opportunities to go on-air right away,” Jay said. “It was terrifying at first, but then it became really good. ϳԹ’s student radio station allowed me to gain confidence in radio work, and I gradually moved my classes from print to broadcast.”
Jay’s work at the student station also allowed him to produce a tape, which landed him a job at WCMW, a 1,000-watt daytime station.
“I worked there for the rest of my time at ϳԹ, including summers,” Jay said. “It didn’t pay as much as road crew, but I got experience. The point of this story of my journey is that through the mentorship of older students and the quality of professors, programs and opportunities, ϳԹ provided me the platform to pay for my remaining years at the university and put me on the path to career success.”
After ϳԹ, Jay worked at WCMW full-time. But it was a turbulent time as the United States was deeply enmeshed in the Vietnam War, and he knew the draft was coming. He didn’t want to lose years of professional development, so he volunteered for the Army in order to have some choice as to the field into which he would be enlisted. He was placed in an information office, and after training in New York, he was sent to Italy as a military journalist.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Jay said. “I learned a lot about life, which prepared me for later on. And it was just another stair-step of things that started at ϳԹ. I’m very proud to say I’m a ϳԹ graduate, and it has become more valuable to me over the years. Somehow, at ϳԹ, there was always a hand there. All I had to do was reach out.”
Jay also had some thoughts to impart to anyone considering making a gift to ϳԹ.
“Everyone is helped in some way at some point in their life,” Jay said. “If you’re doing well in life, think back to why that is possible and who helped you, and how you might be able to pay it forward.”