Carving a Path

An Ogden boy who wanted to ski for the Utes.

A talent for making money matched only by its propensity to give it away. A university president who knew the first step to achieving your dreams was to ask. A bank’s marketing slogan … The story behind the transformative gift of $110 million from two Eccles family foundations to the University of Utah School of Medicine is one that involves a series of fortunate events, beginning with a warm day in Salt Lake City in the early fall of 1952.

Spence Eccles had just turned 18 years old when his parents, Spencer and Hope, dropped him off in front of the University Heights student apartments on the corner of 1300 East and 100 South. Beckoning just beyond was the University of Utah campus, where he was about to begin his freshman year.

In choosing to come to the U, Spence was already a trailblazer. Neither his father, nor any of his Eccles uncles and aunts—the four sons and five daughters of “Utah’s Rockefeller,” industrialist David Eccles—had attended the U. As prominent as the surname was in business and financial circles, and as ubiquitous as it was destined to become on the Utah campus, Spence was the first in the family line to enroll in Utah’s flagship university.

His reasons for coming were purely personal. He wanted to ski race with the best. He’d been skiing since he was 9, learning the ropes from no less a luminary than Corey Engen at Snowbasin in the mountains above his hometown of Ogden, and turning gates since he was 11. He starred on the regional junior racing circuit and was part of two state championship ski teams at Ogden High School, all the while taking note that one of the top college programs in the country was just down the road in Salt Lake City.

In 1948, when Spence was an impressionable teenager, the United States Olympic Team was packed with U of U skiers, including Jack Reddish, Darrell “Pinkie” Robinson, and Dev Jennings, not to mention Corey and his brother Alf Engen, the Olympic coach who sometimes helped out with the Ute program.

“That made a big impression on me. Those guys were my idols,” said Spence, who showed up and hoped he’d make the team. There were no athletic scholarships for skiers in those days. The Utes didn’t recruit him. He recruited the Utes.

If there was a downside to college life in the 1950s, time has vanished all memory of it for Spence.

“Oh my gosh, it was wonderful; I just fell in love with the school,” he said. “I boxed in the Tin Gloves, joined the Betas, did a lot of singing and partying, all those things, and generally stayed out of jail.”

As a ski racer he lettered four straight years on Utah teams that finished sixth, sixth, and seventh in the nation (the inaugural NCAA-sanctioned national ski championships were held in 1954, his sophomore year.) He was team captain as a senior, placed top 10 in the alpine events at nationals, and was named a collegiate All-American.

Along the way he earned his degree in business, paving the way for his entrance into the master’s program at Columbia University, and, most importantly, met the love of his life. He was living in the Beta house his junior year when he saw Cleone Peterson, a freshman from Fairview who had rushed Pi Beta Phi, the Beta’s sister sorority, standing across the room at a fraternity-sorority exchange.

“I’m going to marry that girl someday,” Spence told himself, and then he kept the promise. They were married 54 years until cancer took Cleone in 2013. “Way too soon,” he said. “She was the best thing that ever happened to me.” To this day you’ll find a photograph of his wife in the breast pocket of his ever-present Utah red blazer.

That all of the above would not have happened without the University of Utah has never been lost on Spencer Fox Eccles. He entered an Ogden boy. He left a Utah man.

Spence’s father, Spencer Stoddard Eccles, the second son of David and Ellen Eccles and a founding board member of the family-run First Security Bank Corporation, had a soft spot for health care causes. In Ogden, he was an advocate and benefactor of St. Benedict’s Hospital and a founder of the Ogden Surgical Society. His support extended south to Salt Lake City when he was asked to join the University of Utah Board of Regents (now the Board of Trustees) in 1951, just as his namesake son was about to enroll as a freshman.

As vice chairman of the Board of Regents and chairman of the finance committee, Spencer S. led the effort that secured a $15 million appropriation from the state and another $4 million from an ambitious private sector fundraising campaign to build a medical center on campus.

Prior to then, medical school was an unwieldy situation at best. Classwork for medical students was held in a lecture hall at the university, while research and training took place at the Salt Lake County Hospital several miles away.

By 1962, funding for the new medical center was secured and construction on the massive 576,000-square-foot project began. Three years later, the sparkling new University of Utah Medical Center, dubbed Building 521 because of its street address, was unveiled on the northeastern edge of campus. With classwork, research facilities, and an operating hospital now all combined in one location, the U of U could begin to take its place among the country’s top schools of medicine.

As Building 521 got up and running, it quickly became evident that the space set aside for the medical library, a windowless room in the basement, was woefully inadequate for the task.

A campaign began to raise money for a separate library building, a challenge made more difficult because of fundraising that had just taken place for the medical center.

Short of their goal by $100,000, Kenneth Castleton, Dean of the School of Medicine, and Salt Lake City businessman Reed Brinton drove to Ogden to pay a call on their good friend Spencer S. Eccles. Without hesitation, Eccles agreed to provide the $100,000 needed to move the library project forward.

It was his last act of giving. The respected philanthropist and financier contracted liver cancer in 1965 and died in September of that year at age 71.

After Spencer S.’s death, it was discovered that due to rising costs, yet another $150,000 was needed to build the library. In Boise, where the 31-year-old Spence was getting started in the family banking business, the phone rang. Knowing how much the library, the University of Utah, and health care meant to his father, he said he’d see what he could do.

He hung up and called his sister, Nancy, in California and his mother, Hope, in Ogden. Each agreed to write a $50,000 check in Spencer S.’s honor, bringing the combined Eccles contribution to $250,000, enough to ensure the project’s success.

Built next to Building 521, the medical library was dedicated on October 4, 1971.

To Spence and his family it will always be “Dad’s Library.” To the world it was unveiled as the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.

It marked the first time anything on the Utah campus was connected with the name Eccles. It would not be the last.

In the 1970s, many of the Eccles family foundations began granting gifts to worthy causes. These foundations were set up years earlier by the forward-thinking sons and daughters of David Eccles who wanted to ensure that a portion of the family fortune would help others long after they were gone.

Thanks to the relationship started by Spence and his father, any number of U of U causes began attracting Eccles family support. From the football stadium to the business school to the alumni association to the tennis program to the fine arts to the student life center to the Spence Eccles Ski Team Building—home to the 14-time national champion Utah Ski Team. In these and a veritable multitude of other places and programs, it was hard to find a portion of the campus untouched by Eccles altruism.

This was especially true for the medical school. Significant grants created such important healthcare facilities as the Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute, the George and Dolores Eccles Institute of Human Genetics, the George and Dolores Eccles Critical Care Pavilion, the expanded Moran Eye Center, and many more.

All the while, the family of Spencer Stoddard Eccles never lost sight of the expanding needs of “Dad’s Library.” In 1983, the Hope Fox Eccles Clinical Library was added to the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, and in 2005, the five-story Spencer F. and Cleone P. Eccles Health Sciences Education Building was completed next door. They are connected by the Eccles Family Generations Bridge that symbolically links three generations of Eccles: from Spencer S. and Hope to Spencer F. and Cleone to their four children: Hope, Lisa, Katie, and Spencer.

In 2018, when Dr. Ruth Watkins became the 16th President of the University of Utah and Dr. Michael Good was appointed Senior Vice President of Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine, the two leaders inherited the challenge of what to do about the aging medical center. For more than a half-century, Building 521 had served its purpose well, but it had “outlived its useful life,” as the president put it, “and could no longer optimally support innovative medical education, research, and clinical care functions.”

Building on plans that had begun under their predecessors, Watkins and Good brainstormed about how to proceed. They knew the legislature had committed financial support for a new medical education facility, but that those funds were bare bones and would cover only the basics. To effect a truly transformative makeover, they would need substantial help from the private sector.

The School of Medicine had a strong reputation. Watkins and Good believed it was possible for it to take its place among the nation’s leading medical schools.

They consulted with thought-leaders across the university and health sciences. What they heard was unequivocal: The opportunity to make a dramatic leap forward was there—but it would require a significant investment. It would require a state-of- the-art facility to succeed the outdated Building 521, expanded support for cutting-edge research, and an “endowment for excellence” that would include scholarship funds.

Watkins and Good made an appointment to talk to Spence Eccles. They were well-versed in the Eccles history with the university; all it took was a stroll around campus to recognize the enormous giving relationship.

“This is a person and a family who are unwavering in their commitment not only to this university, but also to the entire state of Utah. They’re truly visionary, and always looking for ways to enrich excellence and make a meaningful difference,” Good said.

Conversations began in early 2020, when Watkins and Good welcomed Spence and daughters Lisa and Katie to the Eccles House on Penrose Drive, the former home of George and Dolores Eccles that was donated to the U and now serves as the residence of the university president. In broad strokes, they laid out a vision and a big, bold ask to move the medical school forward dramatically:  $90 million.

The parties met regularly and, together, refined their vision over the next year, while the two Eccles foundations–the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation, both of which Spence serves as CEO–did their due diligence.

“We started with our outstanding medical school, and then said, ‘How can we make it even better?’” Good recalled.

Lisa Eccles, President and COO of the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, and Katie Eccles, vice chair of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation, met often with Watkins and Good over a series of afternoons and evenings. They explored and defined the purpose and transformative possibilities of such an investment and how it could make the most impact for medical education in Utah and the nation. They made sure such goals as increasing scholarships and the size of incoming medical classes–particular concerns of Spence’s–were included.

In spring 2021, the U presented its formal plan to the Eccles for the $90 million it had requested.

Two months later, the Eccles were back at Eccles House once again, where they told Watkins and Good they didn’t want to fund the $90 million that was requested. Instead, they wanted to increase it to $110 million.

When his Uncle George died in 1982 and Spence took over as CEO of the Eccles’ First Security Bank empire, one of his first hires was a marketing director who came up with a new ad campaign featuring the slogan, “Currently giving 110%.” The message was that First Security was committed to delivering more than was expected. Through the years, “110%” became synonymous with First Security, carrying the bank to its historic acquisition by Wells Fargo in 2000 for $2.9 billion.

Ever since, Spence Eccles has worn a “110%” pin on his lapel, incorporating the philosophy into not only his company but also his personal and family ethos. He was wearing one the day he informed Ruth Watkins the two foundations he oversees wished to give the university more than they requested: $30 million for construction of the new medical center, $40 million for endowment, and $40 million for cardiovascular research. It added up to $110 million.

Gift will accelerate basic science research at the Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute.

“We decided the gift we wanted to give should represent the 110% that is needed for this to be a truly transformative effort,” explained Spence. “A reminder to everyone involved with the medical school to always do more, to reach more, to be more.”

Getting more than it asked for, the University of Utah gave the Eccles something they never asked for: announcing that the name of the medical school will now be the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.

When the new building that will replace 521 is completed, the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine will look directly across the way at the Spencer Stoddard Eccles Health Sciences Library—symbolically connecting father and son, and the Eccles legacy of giving and the University of Utah commitment to health care, in perpetuity.

All because an Ogden boy wanted to ski for the Utes.