Wayne and Mary Hockmeyer
Working for the Welfare of Others
By Diane Silver
Altruist: noun, “a person unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the welfare of others.”
Random House Dictionary, 2009
If you were searching for a couple to embody the word “altruist,” you would need look no further than Wayne Hockmeyer (’66 entomology; ’02 honorary doctorate, science) and Mary Hockmeyer.
Between service in the military and as a school teacher, a business based on helping others, a hands-on commitment to the environment, support of guide dogs for the blind, and their dedication to Purdue University, these President’s Council Pinnacle Level members have made the needs of others a priority.
That kind of devotion was the driving force behind their $5.3 million gift to Purdue for the Wayne T. and Mary T. Hockmeyer Hall of Structural Biology.
Their primary goal, Mary says, is to provide students and professors with the resources they need to do work that may benefit people in the future. Wayne adds that Purdue played a vital role in his life.
“Frankly, I don’t think I would ever have done what I did without that experience at Purdue,” he says. “It made me from the point of view of creating my interest in biology and in science, and ultimately in making me the kind of person I am today.”
After graduating from Purdue and working at Dow Chemical Co., Wayne was commissioned as an officer in the Army, beginning a 20-year career. Following airborne and special forces training, Wayne served in Vietnam in 1968 with the 5th Special Forces Group. With the help of the Army, he earned a doctorate from the University of Florida in 1972.
During his military career, Wayne authored many research papers with an emphasis on malaria vaccines. During his last six years in the service, he chaired the Department of Immunology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Wayne retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel. During his service, he was awarded the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service medal and the Army Commendation medal. The Legion of Merit and Meritorious Service medals were each awarded twice.
In 1988 Hockmeyer founded the biotech company MedImmune Inc. He served as president, CEO and chairman of the board. The company had about 3,000 employees worldwide when it was acquired by AstraZeneca in 2007.
Mary taught school in California; Florida; Nairobi, Kenya; and Maryland where she worked with highly gifted children. She earned a doctorate in Human Development from the University of Maryland in 1990.
The couple’s son, John, earned a bachelor’s degree in Twentieth Century English Literature from Vanderbilt University, a master’s in English from George Washington University, and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. Today he works for MedImmune.
These days the Hockmeyers live a semi-retired life, splitting their time between a home in Vero Beach, Fla., and a farm in Maryland on the Choptank River, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay.
Wayne serves on a number of corporate boards in the healthcare industry. The couple are dedicated to restoring wildlife habitat on their farm. Among other tasks, they have been installing buffer strips to block nitrogen and phosphorous runoff from spilling into Chesapeake Bay. They are also working to restore local wetlands.
“You’d be shocked at how fast nature recovers when you give it a chance,” Wayne says.
Mary’s passion is for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a Yorktown Heights, N.Y., nonprofit that provides guide and service dogs. The school has a worldwide reputation for breeding exceptional dogs and providing customized training for the hundreds of the blind men and women it serves. In a new initiative called Heeling Autism, the organization has become the first guide dog school to train its dogs to provide safety and therapeutic companionship for children with autism. All of Guiding Eyes’ programs are provided at no cost to its clients, and the school receives no government funding. (www.guidingeyes.org)
Supporting education in general and Purdue in particular remain a priority, Wayne says.
“Both Mary and I believe that education is extraordinarily important. It certainly was for our lives. Making a donation is a way to give back for future generations.”
Scott and Nikki Niswonger
The Joy of Giving Back
By Diane Silver
When 18-year-old Scott Niswonger left his home in a farm town of 11,000 and arrived at Purdue University in 1964, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
“It was incredible,” says Scott (AT ’68, HDT ‘04). “I was the luckiest boy pilot from Van Wert, Ohio, to just be accepted at Purdue. That kind of education didn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”
Flash forward to 2009. After a successful career as a pilot, transportation executive, CEO and founder of two air and ground freight businesses, Scott is giving back to his alma mater. With his wife, Nikki, Scott has been a long-time donor to the university. Most recently, the couple provided the leadership funding for the new Niswonger Aviation Technology Building.
Purdue will dedicate the building on September 25. The 18,200-square-foot structure provides a large, updated training facility for future pilots, airline managers, aeronautical technologists and others pursuing careers in the aviation industry.
When he was a student at Purdue, Scott says he was so excited that he didn’t yearn to be anywhere else in the world. No exotic locale was half as enticing as Purdue’s Airport in West Lafayette, IN.
“Is this real?” Niswonger says he used to think. “Because this is it. This is exactly what I want to do.”
At the heart of his excitement was the opportunity to participate in a full-fledged airline. Run by the university, the company was called Purdue Aeronautics Corp., which later became Purdue Airlines before losing its primary investor and closing its doors in the 1970s, Scott says.
“You worked at this operating airline that was headquartered at the Purdue airport,” he says. “You worked weather, dispatch and flew. You worked as co-pilot and flight engineer. You worked all over this little airline. Can you imagine a 20-year-old kid being the co-pilot of a (twin engine, 24-passenger) DC-3?”
Scott was bitten by the aviation bug early. His home was on the flight path of Baer Field, the World War II-era Army Air Forces facility that later became Fort Wayne, Ind, International Airport. Growing up, he loved to watch the planes descending over his house for the final leg of their flights.
At first he was satisfied to build model airplanes, but when Scott was 12, his aunt gave him $25 to take an airplane ride. Since rides only cost about $4 each, he managed to get five rides out of the gift and became a familiar sight at the airport. When he ran out of his aunt’s money, he kept going back.
“My mom always knew where I was,” he says. “I was always at the airport, polishing airplanes, washing airplanes, doing anything for another airplane ride.”
On the earliest day he could legally do it – his 16th birthday – Scott soloed on two airplanes. On his 17th birthday, he earned his private pilot’s license. On his 18th birthday, he got his commercial pilot’s license.
Always a hard worker, Scott got his first summer job as a teenager bailing hay. To make enough money to pay out-of-state tuition at Purdue, Scott spent the summer before college working eight hours a day at a construction site across the street from a factory. At 4 p.m. every day, he would finish his construction job, dash into a nearby diner for a hamburger and then clock in at the factory and work until midnight.
After graduating from Purdue, Scott took a job as a corporate pilot for Magnavox. He founded the cargo airline, General Aviation, Inc. before serving as vice president of U.S. Operations for Flying Tigers Line. He later co-founded Landair Transport and Forward Air Corp. He is a graduate of the United Airlines Training Academy in Denver, Colo., and earned a degree in business administration from Tusculum College in 1987. He is a certified airline transport pilot and has flown everything from J-3 Cubs to the Boeing 747 aircraft.
Although he and Nikki met in high school and went to the junior-senior prom together, they fell out of touch after graduating. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Wilmington College in Ohio and had a career in banking in Cincinnati before she and Scott connected again. Today they have four children and five grandchildren.
The Niswongers have transformed their financial success into help for others. They founded the Niswonger Foundation to help students attend college and to bring new economic opportunities to East Tennessee where they live. They also took the lead in building the Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Greeneville, Tenn., and led the way in building the Niswonger Children’s Hospital in Johnson City, Tenn., which opened in February. The facility is one of six St. Jude’s affiliate hospitals. At Purdue, the Niswongers are long-term donors and have reached the Pinnacle Level of giving within The President’s Council. Previous projects include the Holleman-Niswonger Simulator Building.
These days, Scott and Nikki are flying high with the joy they get from their philanthropic projects. Scott is particularly thankful to be able to give back to Purdue. As the economy sputters, he says, it is more important than ever for alumni to support the university.
In his speaking engagements, Scott talks about a way of life that he calls “Learn, Earn and Return.” It’s a code he lives by.
“If people who have been successful don’t come back and help build a foundation for those who will come after them, then the university isn’t going to continue to succeed,” he says.
For Scott, giving back to Purdue is also a personal thank you for those exciting days when the university first made it possible for him to take the controls of a DC-3.
“So many people went out of their way for me, to help this tall, skinny, blonde kid from a cornfield in Ohio,” he says. “I can’t begin to tell you how much they gave to me, and I never will forget it.”