Fritz founds a college

The Other Paper recorded the departure of Converse College president Nancy Oliver Grey for “Hollings” University in Roanoke. Maybe in Winter Park, next to Orlando, they have “Rollings” College.

Not my job

Earle E. Morris Jr. told his Carolina Investors depositors his firm, where he was chairman of the board, was “solid as the Rock of Gibraltar,” while the company was actually on the brink of bankruptcy. They believed him, and they deposited their money without asking to see the financials. Those financials were put before Morris in the Greenville courtroom this week, and they showed a sorry financial shape at HomeGold, the parent company of Carolina Investors. Both Carolina Investors and HomeGold went under in 2003, costing 9,000 investors about $277 million. The dismal financial shape was concurrent with Morris’ declarations of Gibraltar– like solidity. The former comptroller general of SC told the courtroom he never reviewed the corporate financials, claiming he had no fiscal duties as the chairman of the board of Carolina Investors. As the company’s trusted customer contact man, Morris pushed uninformed investors for more deposits.

Former SC Governor Robert E. McNair testified on behalf of Morris. McNair said Morris would never intentionally mislead anybody on anything. McNair must have a pretty good understanding of such situations. McNair’s friend and former USC president Jim Holderman went to prison for not reporting McNair’s $25,000 “finder’s fee” he paid Holderman for scoring a law client. McNair was counted among the local promoters of Air South, the airline that went broke with unpaid obligations of something like $60 million. McNair’s law firm was cheerleader and bond counsel for Mayor Coble’s rejected headquarters Hilton deal, the proposal that was approaching a cost–per–room number twice what the market could bear.

Speaking of Mayor Coble’s failed hotel deal

Realtor Charles Gary was on city council’s schedule for last week’s closed–door executive session, presumably because he was demanding payment for his work on the mayor’s rejected headquarters Hilton deal. In April of 2003, Gary signed the same memorandum of understanding (MOU) both developer John Lumpkin and architect Bobby Lyles signed. The MOU stated explicitly no player got paid for anything if there were no public bond financing. There was no public bond financing. Lumpkin was paid nothing. But Lyles collected just under $700,000 out of a total $2.3 million design fee. Understandably Gary must expect to be paid, too. Lawyer I. S. Leevy Johnson said in a letter to the city months ago he expected the dead–deal development team to be paid its past–due $5 million in expenses. When Gary was Richland One’s residential real estate point man for the houses next to Dreher, long before there was a bond referendum, he secretly managed to get the homeowners to agree to sell, and he managed to collect his share of the double–fee payment.

Museum money

The Greenville County Museum of Art committed $5.8 million for art by SC’s own Jasper Johns. The art is being bought directly from Johns, presumably at a team price and at a reasonable payment schedule. In 1988, a Johns painting sold in auction for $17 million, and just last year or so another painting privately changed hands in Los Angeles for a reported $40 million. Johns spent three semesters in the art department at USC in the late ’40s, and he returned regularly to see his friend and former professor Catharine Rembert. Rembert lived in a house behind the Women’s Club on Devine Street, where Johns plastered the ceilings. Johns turns 75 this May 15, and the Jasper Johns Foundation is raising funds to install a bronze bust of Johns on the Senate Street median in front of the art department. If Columbia can’t compete with Greenville’s $5.8 million acquisition, we can at least scrounge the $100,000 for a memorial dedicated to the most important American artist for the past 50 years, who is also the world’s most successful living artist.