Telling the Truth

Meet my two part-time colleagues in the dean’s office. Without them, I might not have had a job. Their jobs were about money. Lots of it.

The Personal Touch
Every morning between 9:30 and 10:00, EW and AG arrived. Their desks were next to mine. EW had been there for years; AG was hired soon after I came.

EW’s job was simple. She kept notes and she wrote letters. Not for all donors, but for regular, large and major donors.

She didn’t have access to computers, the internet or social media. Just a telephone, index cards, manila file folders, tons of paper and a habit of listening as though her ears were fishing nets. Bad analogy, but it gets to the truth.

EW usually had a small notepad with her. If she didn’t have her notepad, she wrote on paper napkins, shopping lists, whatever was available. She watched and listened to the news, read several daily newspapers and scoured magazines for noteworthy items. Every day she brought her scribbled notes to work, and entered them on the proper index cards, with dates.

Whatever it took to document important data about important donors, EW knew how to do it. She was born loving to do this and did it magnificently.

She also wrote thank-you letters for Mr. Griswold to sign. Personal letters crafted from her notes and personal knowledge, and written the way Mr. Griswold would write. They were triggered by gifts above a certain  threshold.

When she finished typing them, she left them in a stack, with mailing envelopes, on Mr. Griswold’s stand-up desk. She also left notes attached to letters about which he might have questions, or about things he might like to mention in hand-written notes at the bottom of particular letters.

When the law school received the occasional exceedingly wondrous gift, EW typed no letter. She simply left notes for Mr. Griswold to use. These folks got hand-written letters from him. Immediately. Without delay. Often with a phone call from Mr. Griswold as well.

When the dean’s office hosted social events, EW and JM, the dean’s senior secretary, worked on seating plans. Who would get along well at the dinner table? Any food issues? Names of spouses? The index cards were invaluable.

EW was hospitable and generous. I recall more than one sit-down dinner at her home for people who worked with Mr. Griswold. She always included spouses or dates (no such thing yet as Significant Others). She was our social Queen! Outgoing, personable and committed.

And what about AG, my other part-time coworker? She came in 3 hours a day. Not much, you say? Well, remember all those people whose gifts were just below the cut-off line for personally-crafted letters from Mr. Griswold? There could be more than 100 of them on a given day, depending on the time of year.

When AG arrived each day she found a list on her desk. It came from the fundraising office. The list included all smaller donors—names with titles, addresses, and the amount donated.

Her job was to produce letters, with envelopes, ready for Mr. Griswold. Almost 3 hours of nonstop typing and attention to detail. With a 15-minute break somewhere in the middle.

AG typed one thank-you letter at a time, using a master copy as her guide. Though they weren’t long, they had to be correct. No misspelled or dropped words; no sloppy spacing or erasures on the page. How it looked was part of the game plan. Before she left for the day, AG’s stack of letters, with mailing envelopes, was also placed on the stand-up desk for Mr. Griswold to sign.

The last year I was in the office, AG was moved to a very small ‘office’ (more like an open closet) of her own. She had a new (noisy, hot) electric typewriter that typed the letters for her and generated envelopes. All she had to do was put the paper in, enter the address, greeting, and amount donated. The machine did the rest.

Often when I left for home, Mr. Griswold was in his office with the door open, at his stand-up desk, signing thank-you letters.

To be continued. . . .

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 April 2015
Image: http://www.360alumni.com