Widow Demands Return of Husband’s Gift to School

Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse pledged $10 million to the University of Alabama on the condition it rename the state’s flagship business school for him.

A few years later, the Culverhouse name is everywhere: on signs, on coffee mugs and on the lips of secretaries who answer the phone, “Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration.”

It may not be there for long.

Culverhouse’s widow, Joy, and son are suing the school to withdraw the gift and remove the name. The university, in turn, is suing to keep one of its biggest donations ever.

The struggle is the latest unseemly turn in a story that began decades ago in Tuscaloosa on a decidedly happier note.

Joy Culverhouse, a Montgomery native and amateur golfing champion, met her future husband while both attended the University of Alabama. A devoted wife, she went by “Mrs. Hugh Culverhouse” at tournaments to promote his career as a tax lawyer.

But that was before Culverhouse died and his $381-million fortune became the center of a lurid court battle that included allegations of adultery and trickery by Culverhouse, who got his wife of 51 years to sign away rights to most of the money.

“I’d like to pull him out of the grave and shoot him with every bullet I could get,” Joy Culverhouse said as the allegations unfolded in a Florida court.

Despite the ill will, spite has nothing to do with Joy Culverhouse’s attempt to cancel the pledge and remove Culverhouse’s name, said her lawyer, Kathy Gibbs.

Instead, Joy Culverhouse contends that Alabama failed to name the school for her husband quickly enough, that the trustees of her husband’s estate had no authority to make good on the pledge, and that the university had the nerve to press her for more donations even as it delayed the renaming.

For its part, Alabama contends that the agreement with Culverhouse is valid and that the university was unable to put his name on the school earlier because of Joy Culverhouse’s fight for control of his estate.

Culverhouse gave $3.4 million to the university before the $10-million donation, even then making him one of the school’s largest benefactors. The accounting school long has been named for him.

A month before his death in 1994, Culverhouse signed a trust agreement providing a $10-million endowment for the Alabama business school provided the university agreed to rename it for him.

The estate’s trustees sent Alabama $1 million and signed a promissory note for the rest. The estate made interest payments to the university totaling about $540,000 last year before the money stopped. At the time, the university had yet to rename the business school for Culverhouse.

About the same time, Joy Culverhouse was in court in Tampa, Fla., to remove the trustees from her husband’s estate. The suit was settled in February, and new trustees were named.

In May, Joy Culverhouse sued the university.

Within weeks, the university renamed the school for Culverhouse with a caveat: The action could be reversed if the remainder of the $10 million was not received. As if adding an exclamation point, the university countersued.