September 5, 2014

On behalf of Rutgers, let me express condolences, deep affection, and gratitude to Floyd’s family—to his daughters, Jean Bragg Schumaker and Janice Bragg; to Janice’s husband, Robert Kirby; and to his grandsons, Jesse and Scott Schumaker. Today we also remember Helen, and we remember Floyd and Helen together, always together, a subject to which I will return. 

Floyd Bragg was a Rutgers man extraordinaire. I begin with those words because that’s how I knew him, and that’s how I’ll describe him. But Floyd brought his same exceptional qualities of brilliance, generosity, humaneness, farsightedness, and loyalty to every part of his life and work—to his family and friends, to his remarkably successful career at the Prudential Insurance Company, to his myriad philanthropies, civic responsibilities, and community commitments—and to his beloved alma mater, Rutgers.

The biographical facts about Floyd and Rutgers are not complicated. A member of the class of 1936 who would graduate with a degree in business administration, Floyd edited the Targum, led his fraternity Theta Chi, participated in student government, and was tapped for Cap and Skull. Those who knew him as an undergraduate remembered an engaging and friendly young man, a devoted Catholic at a time when that was not easy at Rutgers, and a serious student with a drive to succeed in business. But even those who knew Floyd best could not have known that he would become the model Rutgers alumnus of his generation and, because he lived so long and engaged with his alma mater in so many ways, the preeminent role model for several generations of Rutgers alumni. Many of the men and women whom Floyd mentored are here today. 

Again the bare facts are straightforward. As an alumnus, Floyd led the successful drive to raise money to buy a house for Theta Chi, joined the Rutgers Alumni Association and became its president, served on the Board of Trustees, the Board of Governors, and the Board of Overseers, and, in due course, chaired both the Governors and the Overseers. When his formal terms were up, he remained vitally active as a Trustee Emeritus and an Overseer Emeritus—until his death.  Even in his 90s, during my stint as president, Floyd continued to be a thought leader on those boards, as indeed he did in any Rutgers setting where he chose to serve. No one was better trusted by his fellow alumni or by the university’s leadership to grasp and express basic Rutgers truths. And few have been so widely recognized by alma mater as Floyd—with his honorary doctor of law degree, his Rutgers Medal, his Douglass Medal, his induction into the Hall of Distinguished Alumni, and his selection as a Loyal Son of Rutgers. Loyal, indeed.

Everyone who is here this morning and who served with Floyd in a Rutgers way has stories to tell about how he made a difference—for the institution and for everyone who had the privilege to come into contact with him. Here are a couple of my memories of Floyd. 

In the mid-1980s, president Ed Bloustein called on Floyd to chair Rutgers’ first comprehensive capital campaign.That sounds routine enough, until you remember that, unlike its peers, Rutgers had hardly been in the fundraising business before that. Despite the now-obvious necessity of supplementing state funding and tuition with philanthropic dollars, it was a bold move for Bloustein to declare such a campaign. And in Floyd he found the perfect partner to chair the enterprise and to make an overwhelming success of it. An alumnus, a businessman, and a citizen, Floyd stepped forward to make a difference, not only by giving generously himself, together with Helen, but also, through an astonishing display of energy and imagination, by beginning to create a culture of giving at Rutgers, a culture that has grown and is flourishing today. Many alumni give generously to their alma maters; few completely change the trajectory of a university’s relationship to philanthropy. Floyd did. 

As the capital campaign drew to its successful conclusion, Floyd took on his most ambitious—and farsighted—commitment to the university’s academic excellence. Like philanthropy, the field of marine and coastal sciences barely existed at Rutgers. Despite the immense economic, social, and scientific importance of New Jersey’s Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay coastlines, Rutgers had never made a commitment to this field and, given the powerhouses that had—think of Woods Hole and Scripps, for example—there seemed to be little prospect that Rutgers could become an international leader in this area anytime soon. But our Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, to which Floyd wholeheartedly devoted himself as an adviser, an advocate, and a donor for 20 years, is now a top-five program. Floyd hardly did this alone, of course; brilliant faculty like Fred Grassle and Rich Lutz carried the academic water. But from the beginning, Floyd had the imagination to recognize that Rutgers and New Jersey needed to be among the very best in this field and, thanks to his efforts, we now are.

Everyone knows that Floyd was a great fan of Rutgers athletics, and over the course of more than 80 years he probably attended more Scarlet Knights football and basketball games, home and away, than anyone ever did, or ever will. But more than a fan, Floyd was also farseeing. Just as in philanthropy and marine science, Rutgers was behind the curve. Together with Ed Bloustein and Sonny Werblin, among many others, Floyd recognized that a successful program of intercollegiate athletics would attract badly needed attention to Rutgers and become a window into the rest of the university. Like his other prognostications, this one came true. I saw Floyd at many football and basketball games, always together with Helen. Discerning as he did that I scarcely knew a third down play from a three-point shot, Floyd would seldom bend my ear about the game, but rather about one or another of his Rutgers passions—fundraising for the university, marine science, or our relationship to the state of New Jersey—but his deep affection for the program and the student-athletes was impossible to conceal. Together he and Helen endowed a scholarship fund that supports football and women’s basketball players every year.

Floyd and Helen, Helen and Floyd were inseparable. Their love for each other and for the university made their presence at Rutgers events—thousands of Rutgers events—truly a signature of this institution’s life. If Floyd and Helen were there, and they usually were, it was really a Rutgers affair.

Floyd Bragg . . . was so many things, all of them good, but I knew him best as a Rutgers man extraordinaire. No other alumnus in our history has placed his stamp so successfully on the directions and achievements that have made this institution great. To say that we’ll miss Floyd Bragg because we loved him is obvious. To say that Rutgers will forever bear the imprint of his endeavors is equally so. •

Richard L. McCormick was the 19th president of Rutgers.