Bill Moore, Success Center Benefactor, Dies

William E. Moore, IM 38, of Woodside, Calif., whose $5 million gift made the Student Success Center at Georgia Tech a reality, died Nov. 21.

Raised in a small Arkansas town, he spent most of his childhood helping his family make ends meet. According to a 1993 TECH TOPICS article, he became fascinated with tennis after watching a match during a visit to his grandmother's home in Oklahoma. Because the closest tennis courts to his Arkansas home were nearly 30 miles away, he got a neighbor boy to help him convert a vacant lot into a rough, dusty court, where the few spare hours they had were spent playing tennis. The two small town tennis buffs played their way to the Arkansas doubles championship.

Mr. Moore arrived at Georgia Tech on a tennis scholarship in October 1934 and earned his living expenses performing a variety of campus jobs. An Atlanta Journal article in 1937 spotlighted the "Yellow Jacket busy as a bee" and reported that Mr. Moore's student jobs included baby-sitting professors' children, delivering mail to the dorms, selling tickets at football games, waiting tables in the dining hall and working as a soda jerk at the Robbery. He teamed with Russell Bobbit to win the Southeastern Conference doubles crown in 1938 and help the Yellow Jackets capture the team title. Inducted into the Tech Hall of Fame in 1972, Mr. Moore lost only one singles match during his collegiate career.

Mr. Moore also was president of the Bulldog Club, was elected to Omicron Delta Kappa and was on the staffs of the Yellow Jacket magazine, the Technique newspaper and the Blueprint yearbook.

He worked for W.H. Kelley in the lab at Glidden Paint Co. in San Francisco before joining the Navy during World War II and serving two years in the South Pacific as an officer on a destroyer. After his military service, he convinced his former Glidden boss, who had retired, to join him in business, the Kelly-Moore Paint Co. After six years of steady growth, Kelly retired again and Mr. Moore bought him out. The business went on to become the largest privately held company in the United States. Mr. Moore also developed the Broken O Ranch, the largest irrigated acreage in Montana, and was chairman of Calmutual Insurance Co.

In addition to the Bill Moore Student Success Center, his generosity is apparent at the Bill Moore Tennis Center, dedicated in October 1988, and through an endowed scholarship for tennis players.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that in 1993 Mr. Moore told Tech students who would benefit from his contributions, "May each find the foundation for a successful life, a positive balance of mind, body and spirit."

This article is re-printed with permission from Tech Topics.