BERKELEY – Cal alums Jeff (BA Rhetoric '75) and Patty (BA History '75, single subject teaching credential '76) Williams are no strangers to making an impact both in their local community and on campus. In 2022, the couple honored Patty's teaching background and made a generous endowment gift to the Berkeley School of Education that covers the entire cost of attendance in the Berkeley Teacher Education Program for an aspiring teacher, first-generation college graduate, in perpetuity.
 
Ahead of the 150th anniversary of the men's rowing program next season, the Williamses have made a $1.5 million gift to endow the Williams Family Men's Rowing Head Coach –which was part of the matching endowment challenge led by the longtime UC Berkeley and Cal men's rowing supporters, the Rogers family.
 
It was the Williamses' love of rowing that drew them to support the California men's rowing program, and specifically after observing the leadership of head coach Scott Frandsen for the past seven years. With their gift, Jeff and Patty hope to encourage others to consider contributing to the campaign to fully endow the men's rowing program.  
 
The Cal men's rowing program is now the fifth at Cal to have its head coach position endowed, joining football, men's golf, field hockey and men's tennis.
 
"We are immeasurably grateful for Jeff and Patty's generosity. Our program has set the standard for intercollegiate men's rowing, and their gift will help us enormously as we strive for continued financial stability," Cal Athletics Director Jim Knowlton said. "Support like Jeff and Patty's is crucial in allowing our men's rowing program to continue to be among the nation's best."
 
Jeff, a third generation Golden Bear, was introduced to rowing by his mother, Harriet, a Cal alum who built friendships with members of the rowing team during her time in Berkeley in the late 1940's -  attending many races at the team's old home course on the Oakland Estuary (Her father, Bill Neufeld, was a discus and javelin thrower for Cal in the 1920's, a member of the U.S. Olympic team in Paris in 1924 -  where he took fifth in the javelin -  and a 1998 inductee into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame.)  When Jeff was at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, his mom took him to watch various rowing regattas at the Long Beach Marine Stadium, the rowing venue for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
 
So Jeff knew he wanted to join the Cal's men's rowing team when he arrived on campus as a freshman in the fall of 1971. Back then, the freshman coach would typically wait for freshmen to emerge from their mandatory physical at the start of the school year, pulling aside guys who fit the general rower's stereotype build (tall and lanky and not an athlete already playing some other sport). When then-freshmen coach Kent Flemming approached Jeff as he exited Cowell Hospital, Jeff cut off his recruiting pitch to tell him that he was already eager to join the program.
 
These days, as much as Frandsen strives for excellence on the water and to put his athletes in a position to contend for a national championship year after year, he places an equal if not greater emphasis on ensuring his rowers give the same effort in the classroom. For the last seven consecutive years, the Cal men's rowing team has won the annual Newmark Award for a large men's team – given to the teams at Cal with the top cumulative grade-point average during the previous academic year.
 
"Scott is a great leader, molder and educator of young men. We like how the program is flourishing under him," Jeff said. "It's manifested in success both on the water and in the classroom. Having a program that has six and seven boats on the water in practice each day -- that's a lot of guys who aren't in the first or second varsity and who only get to race a handful of times each year. But they still want to continue to put in the time and the effort necessary to row at Cal, and that speaks volumes about the health of the program under Scott."
 
Patty was introduced to rowing by her mother, Pat, at an early age. The two watched rowing on TV together and Pat talked about the discipline and practice it takes to be successful in the sport. So when Patty and Jeff met at the start of their sophomore years at Cal, Patty knew more about the sport than just about anyone who wasn't a rower him or herself (and the women's rowing program at Cal was still several years away).  Patty and her rowing fan mother even made the trip to Seattle to watch the Cal-Washington dual in 1973 – and it was a sign of how lucky Jeff was to have found her because she stuck with him after his JV boat was trounced by the Huskies by three lengths.
 
"Because I'm from the teaching world, I'm always looking at how adults relate to the young people that they are teaching," Patty said. "I watch Scott and it's clear to me he's truly building a community of young men. I watch how he speaks to his rowers, and you can tell that he's interested in their lives after all of this is done in four years. What are they doing in their time at Cal? Where are they going? What will they take away from their experience at Cal and on the team? All of that has encouraged me to want to make this endowment, because Jeff and I believe this is a legacy that is worth the investment. We want to do this for the school and the rowers."
 
The gift marks a critical step towards establishing the financial stability of the men's rowing program, and both Frandsen and the Williamses hope that it will set an example and challenge others to consider how they can make their mark. Philanthropic support is necessary to ensure Cal men's rowing is able to continue to be one of the most decorated programs in the country and can continue to set up its rowers for success after they leave Cal.
 
"Our immediate focus is to solidify the financial foundation of the program and secure it for generations to come," said Frandsen, who was also a three-time national champion as a rower himself at Cal. "Having Jeff and Patty step up with this gift that will build towards the celebration of the 150th year of rowing at Cal next fall is really exciting. Their leadership, along with the Rogers family, sets the example for others to follow to work towards endowing the program, and I am grateful for their generosity. Gifts like this ensure that generations to come will have the opportunity to pursue excellence on the water, success in the classroom, and a student-athlete experience that is character building and formative - just like Jeff and I had."
 
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