Urbanna Couple Believe in Second Chances: In Education and in Life
June 2, 2004
Retired college teacher Dave Cryer says his first attempt at higher education didn't end so well.
He flunked out of Lycoming College after his freshman year, he said, with a grade point average of 0.0, partying instead of studying.
After four years in the Marines, including two tours in Viet Nam, Cryer did very well indeed with his second chance, this time at the University of Richmond's School of Continuing Studies, then known as University College.
Working as a taxi driver and a bill collector for Sears & Roebuck, he graduated in three years and went on to teach in both the public school system and at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, retiring in 1997. (Ironically, Cryer's father-in-law, Bernard E. Oslin, also attended University College and worked as a bill collector during the day. Oslin received a law degree from T.C. Williams School of Law in 1929.)
In part because of the second chance SCS awarded him, he and his wife Linda, also a retired teacher at Reynolds, recently committed to Dave's alma mater a gift of $500,000, the school's largest ever. "The university was willing to overlook my pre-military indiscretions," Cryer says. He believes in continuing education's concept of giving people a second chance and the flexibility to work while earning a degree.
Giving people chances, second or first, has been a specialty of the Cryers. They loaned a former University of Richmond football player, who had rented from them, the money to buy his first house. Out of that came a very successful mortgage business.
The Cryers, in fact, have been successful at everything they've tried. "A lot of it is luck," says Dave Cryer. When he was named to a bank board, he learned he had to buy stock in it. When he told his fellow directors he had purchased the required 1,000 shares, they were stunned. It seems the buy-in was $1,000, not 1,000 shares. Six months later, the bank was acquired by another bank and their investment had tripled. Much of their luck Dave Cryer credits to his wife Linda, whom he considers his motivating and leading force.
The Cryers, whose children are all grown and on their own, also give the children of others second chances. Dave Cryer is a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) assigned to look after children's interests in court, such as in custody cases. The volunteer work is demanding in terms of time commitment but fulfilling. He and his wife also open their home for respite, short-term and emergency care for foster children. Over the years they've taken in about 40 children, from a day or two to nine months at a time.
He also has a passion for baseball cards, owning 50,000 to 70,000 of them. He has one of the premier collections of Topps cards dating from the early 1950s. The Cryers also love travel and scuba diving and are advanced divers who have experienced dives in most areas of the world except the Antarctic ("Linda does not like being cold," Cryer says by way of explanation.)
James Narduzzi, dean of SCS, said the gift "confirms the commitment of our graduates to providing opportunities for the community to access the university." Narduzzi also believes it will be a springboard to other large gifts to the school.