{"id":13471,"date":"2015-05-05T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=13471"},"modified":"2015-05-05T08:00:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T12:00:24","slug":"mayberry-scholarship-brightens-egans-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/mayberry-scholarship-brightens-egans-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayberry Scholarship brightens Egan\u2019s future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Forever-Chris<\/a>Robert P. \u201cBob\u201d Mayberry Jr., who passed away in 2012 after a battle with cancer, was a member of Clemson\u2019s much-touted 1981 National Championship football team. When his friends and family remember him, however, it\u2019s not for his exploits on the field. They remember the way he went about helping other people. \u201cQuietly and without the need for recognition,\u201d is the way Kendall Alley \u201983, M \u201985, another member of that team, describes it.
\nSo when Mayberry\u2019s friends and family thought about how to honor his memory, they settled on a scholarship endowment that would provide partial scholarships to football trainers and\/or managers. \u201cWe are confident it would have been Bob\u2019s dream to honor those who work hard day in and day out with no expectation of recognition beyond that which accrues to the whole team,\u201d said Mark Richardson \u201983, a member of the committee that initiated the effort. Alley referred to the team managers and trainers as \u201cthe unsung individuals who are so important to the football team\u2019s success.\u201d
\nIn the Clemson football equipment room, you can find one of those unsung heroes.\u00a0[pullquote]Chris Egan operates under the same philosophy that characterized Bob Mayberry. He quietly goes about his job of cleaning helmets, organizing gear and toting bags of footballs on and off the field.[\/pullquote]
\nEgan\u2019s life has not been easy. His family moved around 11 times before he was 12 years old, so his mother home-schooled six children. When he was 13, his father left, and his mother went to work outside the home, still managing to homeschool the kids. Chris dropped out of school at 14, working odd jobs to help support the family.
\nDuring what was supposed to be his senior year in high school, he took the ACT and spent a year at Greenville Tech; the next summer he worked at Camps Hope and Sertoma, based at Clemson\u2019s Outdoor Lab. It was during that summer, working with special-needs adults and kids from underprivileged families, that he began to find his calling.
\nThe next year, he transferred to Tri-County Tech, continuing to work at the Outdoor Lab. A chance meeting with Alphonso Smith, head of equipment for Clemson football, would prove beneficial. Egan applied to Clemson, knowing he would have to pay his way through loans and part-time work. He contacted Smith, who hired him for a position, one with long hours and not much recognition.
\nBeing an equipment manager is not Egan\u2019s only job. He lives and works at the Outdoor Lab as well. And he works with the ClemsonLIFE program, teaching classes for young adults with disabilities. During the summer, he is assistant director of the two camps at the Outdoor Lab. Along the way, he has finished his degree in history and begun a master\u2019s degree in public administration with a focus on working with nonprofits.
\nWhen the scholarship committee came looking for recommendations, equipment manager Abe Reed answered without hesitation. During spring practice, Reed stopped Egan on the way out of practice, took the ball bags from him and told him he needed to talk with someone. Heart in his throat, not knowing what to expect, Egan went in to find Mark Richardson waiting for him. The two talked about the scholarship and about Mayberry, and Richardson had a chance to gauge the young man for himself before signing off on the selection.
\nFor Chris Egan, what does a scholarship like this mean? Egan says his first reaction was \u201ctotal shock.\u201d
\n\u201cIn my family,\u201d he says, \u201cwe\u2019ve always worked very hard for everything. Hearing about that almost made me tear up \u2014 helping me get through the rest of school and pay off my loans.\u201d For someone who sees his future as working with special-needs adults, it\u2019s particularly meaningful. \u201cIt frees me up to do what I want to do, which doesn\u2019t involve a lot of income. It\u2019s pretty incredible.\u201d
\nWhen asked what advice he\u2019d share with other students, he pauses. \u201cPaying for it on my own gave it extra meaning for me. Every class I took, every grade I got \u2014 it was all mine. I\u2019d encourage students to do that \u2014 there needs to be some ownership with school and with work \u2014 realizing that you\u2019re signing your name on everything you do, whether it\u2019s sweeping the floor or doing a presentation for 200 people.\u201d
\nChris Egan signs his name on a lot these days. Without looking for any recognition or special attention. Just the kind of thinking Bob Mayberry would appreciate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert P. \u201cBob\u201d Mayberry Jr., who passed away in 2012 after a battle with cancer, was a member of Clemson\u2019s much-touted 1981 National Championship football team. When his friends and family remember him, however, it\u2019s not for his exploits on the field. They remember the way he went about helping other people. \u201cQuietly and without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8],"tags":[56,403,681,736,1871,2170,2533,2692],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clemson-forever","category-my-clemson","tag-1981-national-championship","tag-bob-mayberry","tag-clemson-football","tag-clemsonlife","tag-mark-richardson","tag-outdoor-lab","tag-scholarship","tag-spring-2015"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/04\/Forever-Chris-Egan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13471"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}