Time Well Spent: Michael Sims '03 and Gash Clayton '03

/ in / 2 Comments / by:

The founders of the sophisticated sports watch company Hook + Gaff are settling into their success — and their product’s higher purpose.Michael Sims '03 and Gash Clayton '03

“Watches have been made since the late 1800s. There’re a few that have tackled the idea with one or two models, but they’ve never gone all in with this concept.”

The concept that Michael Sims is referring to is a watch designed specifically to alleviate discomfort while playing golf or casting a fishing rod by having a crown placement (the small knob on the side of the watch face that adjusts the time) on the left side rather than the right. This way, the crown doesn’t dig into the skin on the back of the left hand when it’s bent or in motion.

When Sims first came up with the idea, he was playing golf.

“I’m one of those weird guys who doesn’t take . off his watch when playing golf,” he laughs. “At the end of the day, I’d have a callus on the back of my hand from the traditional crown placement.” In the midst of juggling his insurance company in Anderson . and helping with his wife’s Chick-fil-A business in Columbia, Sims started researching watches for a solution. The idea for Hook + Gaff began to take shape in his mind, and he knew he’d need a logo, designs and other assets to move forward.

So, he turned to his college buddy Gash Clayton. Clayton, a lawyer by day and artist by night, drafted the sharp, red logo for Hook + Gaff in just a few hours, sending it back to Sims, who was immediately sold. The partnership only grew from there:

“We give each other opinions,” says Clayton, “but at the end of the day, there’s no argument over who makes the final call.” Clayton controls the company’s designs and brand while Sims oversees the day-to-day operations. After launching the company in 2013 with 300 Sportfisher watches manufactured in Switzerland, Sims and Clayton entered Garden & Gun magazine’s “Made in the South” competition. The watch didn’t make the cut, but it was included in the Southern magazine’s gift guide, which “really jumpstarted the brand,” Sims says. Now, Hook + Gaff is growing rapidly with stateside assembly and celebrity ambassadors like Carter Andrews of National Geographic’s Legendary Catch and Brad Leone of Bon Appétit.

Durability is Hook + Gaff’s bread and butter. “We knew that our [customers] were really going to put these through the ringer,” Sims explains. Materials like titanium, scratch-proof sapphire glass and Italian dive straps are staples in each collection. Despite their high-quality product, the question Clayton and Sims get all the time is, “What does your watch do that my smartwatch can’t do?” Their answer may surprise you: “To get away from technology, every once in a while, is a good thing because what you’re going to remember down the road is the time you spent with family and friends, doing things you love to do. … Our hashtag has become ‘Time Well Spent’ over this last year as we try to push that message.

“What is time well spent for you?”

Day at the Museum

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

“People, I’ve been told, would call Bob Campbell and say, ‘Bob, I’ve found a cave bear! Would you want it?’” says Adam Smith, curator of the Bob Campbell Geology Museum. “I get the sense that Bob never said no because his collection was expansive.”

Cave bear skull

The cave bear Smith is referring to is a 35,000-year-old skull that peers from one of the glass cases in the museum, which is settled in the hills of the South Carolina Botanical Garden to the right of the gated entrance. The skull is hulking and toothy, and the sign next to it shows that cave bears were nearly twice as large as grizzly bears and that it was collected in Austria. It’s one of Smith’s favorite pieces.

Along with many fossils and casts like the cave bear, the museum boasts an impressive collection of rocks and minerals. This collection largely comes from the museum’s namesake.

Bob Campbell graduated from Clemson in 1937 and after returning from World War II, opened his own successful quarry business. Campbell soon became known for his collection of rocks and fossils, and he had a network of contributors who helped him. Facing an increasing inventory displayed at their house, Campbell’s wife, Betsy, eventually convinced her husband to open his own museum. Ergo the Bob Campbell Geology Museum.

Adam Smith in the museum with part of a triceratops horn


To highlight what the museum has to offer, we asked Smith to give us his top two picks from the exhibits:

Triceratops

What’s up? This exhibit features a collection of associated triceratops fossils (including a large piece of head frill, four pieces of skull and parts of two of the animal’s three horns) that were collected and prepped by Smith and Clemson students. Associated means that all of these fossils belong to one individual, whereas composite means that the fossils belong to multiple individuals.
What’s cool? A piece of this massive dinosaur’s head frill has been partially embedded in acrylic, allowing visitors to touch and feel a real 68-million-year-old fossil.

Minerals of South and North Carolina

What’s up? This collection shows off the diversity of rocks that can be found in the western Carolinas, which are very mineral-rich states despite their lack of fossils (fossils are quite common in the eastern Carolinas).
What’s cool? The museum runs a free-of-charge mineral and fossil identification service, but Smith has never seen anyone bring in a fulgurite. These very thin tubes of fused sand are created by lightning strikes and are often found near the Outer Banks in North Carolina. But any sandy area has potential, Smith says.

Smilodon, a.k.a. saber-toothed tiger, skeleton

Editor’s Pick ↑

This exact replica of a Smilodon skeleton assembled from fossils pulled from the La Brea Tar Pits in California shows visitors the size and shape of a prehistoric tiger.
 
Take a virtual tour of the Bob Campbell Geology Museum here: giscenter.sites.clemson.edu/pts/campbell/campbell.html

Planting Seeds for the Future

/ in / 0 Comments / by:
Jeannette Carr

Jeannette Carr at Ridge Spring Famers Market

Jeannette Carr was a lifelong gardener who shared her love of gardening with everyone she knew. While her husband, Hap Carr ’60, helped their son, Chalmers R. Carr III ’90, run the largest peach farm on the East Coast, Titan Farms, she kept busy in her small-scale vegetable garden at their home in Ridge Spring, South Carolina. She became a beloved member of the Ridge Spring community through her contributions to the Ridge Spring Farmers Market.

After her passing from cancer last year, Carr’s family wanted to honor her legacy by giving to an organization dear to her heart — the Clemson Cooperative Extension Service. They established the Emma Jeannette Carr Memorial Endowment to advance vegetable gardening education and outreach throughout the Clemson Extension service area.

“Jeannette was well known for her love of gardening fresh vegetables and fruits,” said Extension Director Tom Dobbins. “We are excited and honored to partner with Titan Farms to continue her legacy and advance vegetable gardening across the state of South Carolina.”

Jeannette Carr’s impact on the Ridge Spring Farmers Market is also still being felt. The opportunity for her grandchildren to spend one last summer continuing their grandmother’s legacy by running her vegetable stand was a way to honor her memory. All proceeds will go toward the endowment. Many loyal customers have purchased Carr’s produce from her bountiful last harvest and fondly said, “Keep the change for Miss Jeannette.”

Rocket Woman: Vanessa Ellerbe Wyche '85, M '87

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

NASA is working on sending astronauts back to the moon in 2024. Wyche will be there every step of the way.VANESSA ELLERBE WYCHE ’85, M ’87

Excitement sneaks into Vanessa Wyche’s voice as she talks about the upcoming Artemis program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s 2024 directive that will see astronauts set foot on the moon once again.

“Our intent is to go and have infrastructure in place that would allow additional capabilities on the surface of the moon,” she says. Those additional capabilities include setting up a small gateway platform that will act as a checkpoint for future missions to Mars.

As the deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Wyche has a lot to do before then. One major priority is Orion — the spacecraft on track to return to the lunar surface.

“Having spacecraft that are able to withstand going from Earth to the lunar vicinity and returning is very important,” she says. “We’ve not done that since Apollo, so having the right technologies and the right testing are what our workforce is responsible for laying out.”

Aside from overseeing construction of Orion, Wyche’s responsibilities include monitoring the International Space Station and the Human Research program (which investigates how humans might survive for longer periods of time in space) as well as working with commercial partners, like Boeing and SpaceX, to develop vehicles that will transport astronauts to and from the space station. Wyche was named deputy director in 2018, but her career with NASA has spanned nearly three decades. After graduating with a bachelor’s and master’s in bioengineering from Clemson, Wyche headed to Washington, D.C., where she worked in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Device Evaluation. When she and her husband moved to Houston, she found work at NASA as a project engineer, designing flight hardware. Since then, she’s held multiple leadership positions and earned two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals and two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals.

When she’s not at Johnson Space Center, Wyche is championing STEM in her community. For the past six years, NASA has partnered with The Links, Incorporated to bring a science fair to a local elementary school. NASA employees visit the school and mentor the children on their projects, while the nonprofit provides the supplies and resources to put on the fair.

“The carrot, the way to get all the kids to participate,” says Wyche, “is that if they do their project — no matter how good or bad — they get a field trip to NASA.”

Recently the program has expanded to another local school, which faces even more challenges. Many of its students are destitute.

“But the surprising thing is that those kids were the most excited about being able to do a science project,” Wyche says. “I’m hoping to be able to continue to support both schools, and my longterm goal is to see if we can expand this further.”

Wyche’s work in STEM outreach comes from a place of gratitude for NASA’s commitment to future generations — and also a place of reflection about her own career, one she describes as “awesome. I cannot begin to tell you just how awesome.”

Fort Bragg Family: Mark Pisano '81

/ in / 2 Comments / by:

Pisano has spent his entire career serving a unique group of people: children in military families.

Mark Pisano '81

As a school psychologist, Mark Pisano has been helping military kids process emotion, cope with transition and do their best in the classroom for over 35 years. Pisano works in the Fort Bragg Schools in North Carolina, which includes nine schools on the army base, assessing children for learning disabilities and providing mental health services.

“Sometimes kids feel, and adults, too, that there’s something wrong with them because they’re upset all the time,” he says. “I help them understand that the feelings that they have during deployment — the fear, the sadness — there’s nothing wrong with them for feeling those things.”

After playing on the golf team at Clemson for four years and graduating in 1981 with a degree in psychology, Pisano began his first school year at Fort Bragg in 1982 and has been there ever since. He earned a master’s in 1982 and certificate of advanced study in 1984, both in school psychology, from Western Carolina University and a doctorate in education from Campbell University in 1992b.

Throughout his career, Pisano has not only been able to raise awareness about the unique experience of military kids but also further the resources available to them and their families. He has presented workshops across the country; traveled abroad to work with military kids in Uruguay, Bolivia and Cuba; partnered with Sesame Street, helping disseminate their literature for military families (even bringing Cookie Monster to the Fort Bragg Fair during the Month of the Military Child); worked with John Donvan of ABC News to discuss the intricacies of the deployment cycle and the way it affects kids’ development; and coauthored the Kimochis military families activity kit.

Kimochis, a California-based company founded after the Columbine shooting, creates stuffed animals designed to help children work through trauma and grief and build social and emotional skills. Each character is designed for different feelings and circumstances. According to Pisano, the military families activity kit (which includes the character Hero, a black Labrador) is now found “in every school building in the Department of Defense from Cuba to Hawaii.”

Military families live with abnormal amounts of stress, worry and transition. That transition means Pisano sometimes has to say goodbye to his kids when their families are placed at new locations. He says he often gets asked how he deals with getting too emotionally attached. Does he try to distance himself? His answer: “I welcome it. I don’t avoid it. I don’t fight against it. I welcome all of the friendships and the connections.”

Remaining engaged and connected is key in Pisano’s line of work; there’s always another project

to work on and another child to help. “I love the opportunity to make a difference,” he says. “That is really what’s driving the train, being in a position to make a difference for children, whether it be teaching them to tie their shoes or helping them get enough confidence to raise their hand in class.”