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Good Luck Charm

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Brannon Traxler ’04 recalls how her grandfather got his start at Clemson

 

My maternal grandfather, Gaines Evatt, grew up on his parents’ farm in Central, South Carolina. He was the oldest child and the first to go to college. He started out at what’s now Southern Wesleyan University because the family was part of that church.

As the family story goes, my grandfather was working on the farm one day, and somebody from the church drove by and saw him and asked, “Why aren’t you at Clemson? You’re so smart. Why are you not there?” He said, “Well, we can’t afford it.” The church friend replied, “We’ll see what we can do about that.” They paid for my grandfather’s first semester, confident that he would get a scholarship from there. And he did.

Of course, nobody in the family is alive now who would remember who that friend from church was, but I do know that my grandfather walked the couple of miles to Clemson and back every day. He couldn’t afford textbooks, so he would do all his studying in the library. He would get up early and stay up late to work on the farm. In 1933, he graduated from Clemson A&M College with a math degree.

Two of my great aunts who stayed in Central passed away five years ago; when we were cleaning out their belongings, we found my grandfather’s Clemson class ring, which my mom didn’t even know he had. We also found his graduation ceremony program and a few other things. We have his diploma. He was the first person in our family to go to Clemson, and he helped all his other siblings to go to college and get their degrees. My grandfather was a junior high principal for most of his career, and he ended up getting a master’s degree from Duke some years later. He and my grandmother settled in Spartanburg and raised my mom and her brother.

I wore his ring to the 2017 National Championship game in Tampa, and now, I either wear it on a necklace or on my index finger or thumb at games. It’s become a superstition — a good luck charm.

 
 

Ring Story: Preserving Her Memory

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“We lost my mom four years ago in July,” Frances Mann Medley ’10 says.
In February 2020, the Mann family — including Frances and her family, her father, Stephen Mann ’78, and her brother, Thomas Mann ’06, M ’07, and his family — donated a 2020 Clemson class ring in the ladies dinner ring style to honor their wife and mother, Eleanor Hightower Mann ’78, who passed away in 2017. The donated ring also includes Eleanor’s sorority, Pi Beta Phi, which recently returned to the University’s Greek life.
Stephen and Eleanor met and fell in love when they were both students at Clemson. He was an agricultural mechanization and business major, and she was an elementary education major. After graduating, the couple got married and “put their roots down” in West Columbia, where they raised Frances and Thomas. Eleanor taught elementary kids for 33 years in the area and eventually saw both of her children graduate from her alma mater.
“We have a picture from my graduation day with all four of us with our rings turned,” Frances says. “Sweet memory.”
When asked about the donation, Stephen says it was something that would “last forever. [Clemson] was something that Eleanor was very involved with as a student and as an alumna. It is just a way to preserve her memory.”
Frances says donating the ring was the first time her whole family had been back to Clemson since her mother’s passing. It was a special trip. “When we come back and visit for years to come, when I take my kids as they get older and hopefully my grandkids,” she says, “they can visit the Alumni Center and find their grandmother’s name.”
 

Ring Story: Double Trouble

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Frank Hammond '83

Frank Hammond ’83 lost not one but two Clemson class rings. He tells the strange story of how they were both recovered:

Due at least partially to the shock that I was (seemingly) going to graduate in 1982, my parents offered to buy me a Clemson ring. Much to their disappointment, I took a victory lap but did graduate in ’83. I proceeded to lose the ’82 ring in 1986 on a business trip in Columbia, and they were even more kind to purchase a replacement.

Flash forward to the summer of 2006 on an island in Lake Hartwell. I was with my family, throwing the ball for the Lab, and felt the ring come off, making a nice soft splash some distance offshore. With no luck finding it and figuring two was probably my limit anyway, I resigned myself to moving forward without my Clemson ring.

That is until about a month later when my home phone rang, asking if I was the Frank Hammond that graduated from Clemson in ’83. Affirming that it was indeed me, the caller relayed he had seen something shiny while recently fishing on Hartwell and dove down to retrieve what turned out to be my ring. He was a Clemson grad as well and mailed it back to me, politely refusing any reward. I considered myself more than fortunate to have lost two rings and actually gotten one back, though some nine years later, the story takes an even odder twist.

While sitting at my desk in 2015, my phone rings with that same question, asking for a Frank Hammond who graduated in ’82. The caller said she was looking at my ring, which turned out to be the first one I’d lost. It had been missing for almost 30 years. She was the manager of an assisted living facility in North Carolina, and one of their residents, who could no longer speak, had given it to her the day before with no further explanation of how she came to have it.

“What’s the story?” I asked the manager.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “She just handed it to me.”

Ring Story: Buried Treasure

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When Wade Crow ’69 lost his Clemson ring, he didn’t think he would ever see it again. He tells the story of how it came back to him.

Wade Crow and sons

As a senior engineering student in the class of ’69, I ordered my Clemson ring and couldn’t wait to get it on my finger. It symbolized not only a substantial amount of hard work but also a rewarding and fun-filled college adventure. Eight years later, when my first son was an infant, I took my ring off and left it in my car while doing some yardwork. When I looked for it later, it was nowhere to be found. Although heartbroken, I never seemed to have the extra funds to replace it as our family grew to four children.

Fast forward 25 years. My son is also graduating in engineering, and I offered to give him a ring as a graduation gift. I realized it was a good time to replace mine, so I ordered two rings. The lead time on the rings was six weeks; I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. Two weeks before my ring was due to arrive, I was working in the yard with a shovel and hit something metallic. I turned over a shovel-blade of soil, and an unmistakable glitter of untarnished gold was right in front of me — “Class of ’69.”

Two weeks later, I was the proud owner of two rings. My second son also finished Clemson in engineering and received his ring in 2013. We are likely one of the only families with four Clemson rings and only three graduates to wear them!

Looking back, I recognize that it was never really about the ring. It is all about the wonderful friends and memories associated with Clemson. Same football seats for 45 years, and still going.

Ring Stories: A Clemson Family

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For the Lanhams, the Clemson ring runs in the family.

Lanham Family Rings“Connection.” That’s what Janice Garrison Lanham ’88, M ’94 feels when she looks at her Clemson ring. Connection to her father, who never went to college but paid for her ring. Connection to other Clemson alumni, who have stopped her in line at the grocery store to show their own rings. Connection to her own Clemson family.

As a first-generation college student, Lanham fulfilled her parents’ dreams as well as her own when she graduated from Clemson with a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 1988. After her master’s degree, she started teaching nursing at Clemson, something she wouldn’t trade for the world: “I get to nurse in California and Utah and North Carolina and Georgia all in the same day because I’ve educated nurses who have gone out to work in all of those states.”

Her husband, Drew Lanham ’88, M ’90, Ph.D. ’97, whom she met while they were students, also teaches at the University, and the couple practically raised their children, Kimberly and Colby, on Clemson’s campus. Both followed in their parents’ footsteps.

When Colby, the younger one, graduated, the Lanhams gathered outside of Bon Secours Arena after the ceremony.

“He couldn’t wait to get outside and take a picture,” Lanham laughs, remembering her son’s excitement. “We all laid our hands out and kind of welcomed him into the fold. It was really special.”

Lanham Family

Drew ’88, M ’90, Ph.D. ’97, Janice ’88, M ’94, Kimberly ’12 and Colby ’16, M ’18 Lanham

Do you have a ring story to share? Email shutto@clemson.edu for more information. Visit alumni.clemson.edu/ring for more ring stories.