Alumnus’ Bobcat experience inspires giving through The OHIO Match

Dr. Wayne Pletcher, BS ’66, and his wife, Dr. Carol Pletcher, are pictured on a trip to Botswana. The Pletchers’ latest gift to Ohio University, the Pletcher Science Scholarship, seizes on an opportunity provided through The OHIO Match, an undergraduate scholarship investment program through which the University has pledged up to $25 million to strengthen its endowed scholarship program.

Dr. Wayne Pletcher, BS ’66, was a scientist, an inventor, a business executive, an educator and a novelist, but one of the titles he most cherished was advocate and supporter of Ohio University.

“We believe in the transformative power of higher education,” Carol Pletcher said of herself and her late husband. “We believe that it transforms people both personally and professionally. The total OU experience changed Wayne’s life trajectory.”

Growing up in challenging circumstances in Crooksville, Ohio, Wayne developed a strong work ethic at a young age. He worked for local farmers, baling hay. To earn extra money, Wayne and his older brother, Terry, ran a lawn-mowing business and picked wild blackberries to sell door-to-door. Wayne graduated at the top of his class at McCluney High School; but, after graduation, the family had no money to pay for college, so Wayne followed Terry to Lancaster, Ohio, where they worked manual labor jobs. As they contemplated their future, they found comfort telling one another, “We’re not going to do this the rest of our lives.”

One day, Wayne was working at the lumber yard in Lancaster when the owner confided in him about the struggles facing the business and his plans to lay off a fellow laborer. “My husband said, ‘He has a family and kids. You can’t lay him off. Lay me off instead.’ So, he did,” Carol recounted.

As one door closed, another opened. A school administrator near Crooksville was also a regional coordinator for a burgeoning effort to recruit young, talented individuals for clerk positions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. Wayne applied and was accepted. With little more than the shirt on his back, Wayne headed to Washington, D.C., and spent the next two years working at the FBI, taking classes at the University of Virginia-Arlington Campus (UVA-AC), playing semi-professional baseball in the summer, and, his wife added, “saving money like crazy.”

In the meantime, Terry had enrolled at Ohio University, and in the fall 1963, Wayne joined him, equipped with a scholarship from OHIO’s Chemistry Department and credits he had earned from UVA-AC. Soon thereafter, he was hired as a student counselor in one of the new residence halls on West Green.

“Starting in January 1964, Wayne had earned a full tuition scholarship from the Chemistry Department and a job that gave him room and board, books, and a little bit of spending money,” Carol said. “He kept telling everyone in the Chemistry Department he was going to finish four years of chemistry in three years because he was going to graduate in 1966.” Whatever the magic of that date, Wayne did just that, graduating from OHIO with Honors in the spring 1966.

Dr. Wayne Pletcher passed away on Oct. 20, 2018, but his legacy at Ohio University lives on in the Pletcher Science Scholarship he and his wife established through The OHIO Match.

Thanks to encouragement from one of his physical chemistry professors, Wayne applied to graduate school and enrolled at the University of Michigan. There, with Dr. John Wiseman, a newly-minted professor of chemistry at UM, he engaged in ground-breaking research in organic chemistry, demonstrating exceptions to chemistry principles (Bredt’s Rule) long thought inviolable. At UM, Wayne earned his master’s and doctoral degrees, and met Carol, a fellow graduate student and teaching fellow.

Wayne went on to a 30-plus-year career with 3M, a corporation dedicated to commercializing science as a means of improving lives. At 3M, Wayne served as the director for corporate technical planning before retiring to become president and CEO of Minnesota Technology, a non-profit consulting firm, and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. Later, together with Carol, a former corporate vice president at Cargill, who Business Week named one of the “Top 25 Champions of Innovation,” they started Pletcher Consulting, an innovation and business development consulting firm.

In traversing the road to professional success and personal happiness, Wayne and Carol have never forgotten family, friends, acquaintances and strangers who provided “encouragement, jobs, guidance—all of these kinds of things,” she said, “that got us to where we are.”

“Even though it started out as means of escape — ‘I’m not working in the lumber yards the rest of my life’ — the whole experience (the professors, the financial support, and the OU environment) was crucial in formulating how Wayne was going to live the rest of his life,” Carol said. It was on their honeymoon—traveling from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Williamsburg, Virginia—that Wayne first showed his new bride his alma mater.

“Wayne truly believed OU changed his life and that that magic can happen to others when they come to OU,” Carol said. Based on his experiences, “his belief in the power of education was unrelenting, and he believed if you received a gift like he did—I don’t just mean a scholarship or money, I mean the gift of being transformed—you embrace that gift and become a citizen of consequence.”

Wayne’s vision continues through his commitment to supporting Ohio University, a commitment that began within three years of his graduation. Then, in 2007, he and Carol established the Wayne A. and Carol H. Pletcher Chemistry Scholarship. As Wayne wrote at the time, “OU helped me get started with a tuition scholarship and a dormitory counselor’s job. I’d like to give back.”

The Pletchers’ latest gift to Ohio University, the Pletcher Science Scholarship, seizes on an opportunity provided through The OHIO Match, an undergraduate scholarship investment program through which the University has pledged up to $25 million to strengthen its endowed scholarship program. As part of The OHIO Match, Ohio University will provide $0.50 for every dollar committed to eligible scholarship endowments. The six-year program—that began in July 2013 and runs through June 30, 2019—was recently expanded to include regional campuses and donor-specified programs. Carol observed, “The Pletchers have long been noisy advocates for scholarship matching programs such as this. When the University puts matching money in place, they are making a statement to donors about their commitment to certain priorities.”

“Wayne believed that, when donors were giving significant amounts of money, the University needed to have skin in the game,” Carol added, noting the Pletchers have scholarships or fellowships at all four of their alma maters. “In every case, the University extends matching money.”

The Pletcher Science Scholarship was endowed to benefit undergraduate students enrolled in OHIO’s College of Arts and Sciences who demonstrate both financial need and academic excellence and who are majoring in at least one natural science discipline.

Please consider how The OHIO Match can augment your gift to Ohio University. The program ends June 30, 2019. For more information, click here or call 740-592-3863.