Case Shows Pitfalls of Promised Donations

He was a financial angel, one of UCLA’s most ardent supporters who drew praise for pledging the largest gift in athletic department history.

But when home builder Paul E. Griffin Jr.’s company declared bankruptcy in 1992, his love affair with UCLA deteriorated into a fund-raising fiasco, confidential records show. This summer, his alma mater will remove his name from the Paul and Gloria Griffin Commons.

“Obviously, it’s hurtful for us,” Griffin said in a recent interview.

Few have been so dedicated to UCLA as Griffin, a 1953 graduate. His wife and eight children went to UCLA. He was named 1989 alumnus of the year.

And, as president of the private UCLA Foundation during the 1980s, he once underscored his zeal for fund raising in a speech mentioning a favorite cartoon--in which two vultures sit on the limb of a dead tree.

One bird says: “I’m tired of waiting. Let’s go kill something.”

Griffin did far more than talk. He pledged $350,000 for the J. D. Morgan Hall of Fame to honor outstanding athletes, promised $500,000 for a chair in philosophy and helped keep then-football Coach Terry Donahue from moving to the National Football League by quietly working with school officials to create an annual retirement annuity for him.

The crowning achievement was his 1990 pledge of $5 million for athletics--$2 million to underwrite academic support services and $3 million as the cornerstone gift for a five-story academic counseling center. In gratitude, UCLA named the complex for the developer and his wife.

But the pledge contract was drawn up with his firm, not Griffin personally, and the school did not ask for collateral. When Griffin’s company declared bankruptcy, UCLA was forced to line up with 600 other creditors trying to collect 10 cents on the dollar.

Ultimately, the school’s public praise of Griffin turned into private frustration. Last fall, UCLA officials discussed the possibility of removing Griffin’s name from the building--a first at the Westwood school.

“As you know, we have consistently succumbed to Paul’s request that we wait until ‘my bankruptcy issue is resolved,’ ” an athletic department fund-raiser wrote in a September 1995 e-mail message. “We have waited and waited and now it seems that we are supposed to wait some more.”

Recalling Griffin’s favorite cartoon, the fund-raiser added, “I think it’s time we became vultures.”

Records show that Griffin asked for more time, saying his wife would be devastated by their name coming down. But some UCLA officials were not moved.

Saying that it was “none of our doing,” another athletic official explained in an e-mail message that “they promised to pay $3 million over four years, then $2 million more later. Those four years have long since passed.” In an interview last week, Joseph Mandel, UCLA’s vice chancellor for legal affairs, said the decision to strip Griffin’s name from the building was a difficult one.

“That building generated enormous pride for the two of them, and they reveled in having their name on it for understandable reasons,” Mandel said. “I know that they were reluctant to face up to the consequences of their business reversals and certainly did not leap to the immediate decision that UCLA should take their name off the building.”

But it was inevitable, and in conversations with Chancellor Charles E. Young five months ago, Griffin relented.

“I said I just can’t do it . . . and prefer you take the name off the building,” Griffin said in a recent interview.

The building, however, will not go without a name. In order to raise more funds, Mandel said UCLA is looking for another donor to replace Griffin.