By Lydia DishmanContributing Writer
Phil Prince doesn’t really want to rest on his football laurels. In fact, since he says he’s not much of a computer user, he hasn’t even seen the YouTube version of the moment his star rose on the gridiron. Sixty years ago this October, Prince blocked a punt against South Carolina, allowing the Tigers to score a touchdown that clinched Clemson's 13-7 win.
He chuckles softly to himself at the memory of that “Big Thursday.”
“We were undefeated and untied that year,” says Prince noting, “It was quite a distinction.” Indeed it was given that it was also Clemson's first undefeated season in 48 years, and a feat that only three teams in Clemson history can claim to have accomplished. Prince was a starting tackle and co-captain on a Tiger team that wrapped up with Gator Bowl and Southern Conference championships.
Though he started as a first-year freshman in 1944, Prince was called to active duty in WWII. When he returned, the Erwin, Tenn.-native trotted back out on the field as a junior in 1947. He graduated in 1949 and was immediately signed to the New York Giants.
“I played five exhibition games and got hurt,” shrugs Prince who finished out the season with the New Jersey Giants, the farm team for New York. Even though he married soon after and went on to take a position in Bristol, Tenn. as a teacher and coach, football was not completely off the radar — yet.
Prince was called back for service during the Korean War and was stationed at Fort Jackson. “I had a coach tell me, ‘you don’t you want to play service football, you’ll get hurt.’” He signed up anyway, playing football for his entire 10-month tour. But it was during a pick-up basketball game that summer with a group of Army reserves from Greenwood that his career took a turn away from sports.
“Most of the officers in the unit were Clemson grads. They worked at Milliken, and I knew I wanted to stay in South Carolina because my wife is from Rock Hill,” Prince explained. The Milliken fellows urged him to enter the company’s training program. “I told them I had no experience,” recalled Prince, who held a degree in English and a minor in history and government. “They said, ‘that is alright, you’ll learn.’”
So he did.
Sitting up a little bit straighter in the chair he’s occupying in the lobby of Clemson’s Madren Conference Center, Prince launched into the tale of a chapter in his life that clearly impressed more lessons on him than any of his time on the field, or in the classroom.
Milliken’s industrial engineering program was designed to give trainees a comprehensive look at the way the company did business, from every department in the mills, to conducting product, time and motion studies.
“It was a very good experience and introduction into the world of business,” Prince said, adding that he’s always considered Mr. Milliken something of a mentor because, “he believed in developing his own people and bring them up through standard training indoctrination and orientation.”
As a newly-minted junior industrial engineer, Prince took an open position in production planning before becoming plant manager at Abbeville Mill. Just as his career was really gaining steam, Prince was offered a promotion and a big pay increase — with another company.
“At that time it was sort of an unwritten rule that if you left [Milliken] you didn’t come back,” Prince said, who admits that he accepted the job at Burlington in North Carolina reluctantly. It wasn’t long before he proved that hard and fast rule had an exception.
He was invited back to Milliken in 1957 to be a product manager, a new position at the time. “It was a chance to be exposed to merchandising, fabric and product design,” he said, explaining that a fringe benefit was the ability to travel to New York City to sell to textile converters who bought Milliken’s unfinished materials from their cutting-edge plants for lingerie and curtain fabrics.
Prince’s management skills and efficiency stood him in good stead as he spent nearly a decade going where he was needed to “turn things around.” He laughed as he remembered getting a call from the Gainesville plant manager extolling his virtues, then asking him to come prove them without a pay increase, “to see if you are as good as they say you are. Like an idiot I said yes,” Prince said, smiling broadly.
Despite a string of similar successes, Prince was still wary when he was called to Spartanburg to have a private lunch with Mr. Milliken at his guest house. “I could barely choke anything down,” Prince said because he was told the business portion of the lunch would be discussed after the meal.
Rather than get fired, Prince was put to the tough task of cutting others. As Milliken’s first vice president for Personnel Management and Development, “They call it Human Resources now,” Prince recalled the
“Black Friday” when 1,500 salaried people were laid off. Similar to the drastic downsizing of some current corporations, Prince said that it turned out to be a very smart move. “It trimmed all the fat immediately, plus those people could get good jobs elsewhere because of their training.”
He also pointed out that it would be his job to ensure that Milliken did not add overhead that the company didn’t need. “I did that for 11 years.”
Then it was time for another, bigger, responsibility. Prince got a call from an executive recruiter in New York City asking for a lunch meeting. “I told him if it was in New York I wasn’t interested,” Prince said, with a short laugh. But when his old football friend, Fran Tarkington (the ex-Viking was now employed at American Express) approached him about the same position , Prince agreed to have dinner with the executive vice-president at the financial services company.
“It was a much bigger job in terms of international exposure,” said Prince, who admitted that he was not fazed by the scope of the work but rather, how he was going to tell Mr. Milliken. He managed to pen a long letter to his employer and mentor who graciously accepted. Prince’s eyes blink rapidly as he remembers offering Milliken this nugget of wisdom that he’d picked up from his years at the mills. “Employees will not to do what you expect, but what you inspect.”
It was a fantastic experience for Prince, who rubbed elbows with all manner of glitterati and lived comfortably in several different apartments on the Upper East Side. Still he quips, despite his wife’s shopping excursions to Bloomingdale’s, she and Prince made frequent trips to their home at Pawleys Island declaring that they “existed in NYC, but lived at Pawleys.”
The family decided to settle for good at Pawleys when Prince and his younger son bought the Pawleys Island Hammock manufacturing company. Prince thought he’d just spend time helping his son grow the business, but opportunity came knocking once more. So, he did a short stint in Charlotte at Synco Properties to help a friend.
“Every time I try to retire something would pop up and sound interesting,” admitted Prince, who noted that all this time, he was involved with Clemson: fundraising, promoting academics and athletics. That is an understatement.
Prince was a member of the Alumni National Council and a member of the Board of Trustees. He was also the recipient of the Alumni Association's Distinguished Service Award and the first President's Award, which recognizes outstanding service to the university. In 1989, he was presented the school's highest award, the Clemson Medallion.
The Clemson Commitment capital campaign, also chaired by Prince, raised more than $295 million to support Clemson’s efforts to become a national top-20 public university.
Perhaps another shining moment was when he was named interim president, then acting 12th president of Clemson. Though he only served in that position for one year, the frequency with which he interrupts his stories to shake a hand or exchange a few words with those passing through the Madren’s lobby is testimony to his popularity.
But Prince doesn’t really want to talk about football, even as he watches that short, sepia clip on YouTube with a fuzzy image of himself handily deflecting that punt, and makes a mental note to share the link with his grandson, he goes right back to business.
Winding up his story, Prince reiterates the excellence of Milliken’s corporate structure, touting their organizational chart that took up the walls of an entire room at the headquarters. “I even brought some American Express executives to see it,” he said.
“Milliken’s excellent training program was under my jurisdiction,” noted Prince and with a small nod to sports said, “All of this tends to develop teamwork. This I can take credit for.”