Strong foundation

SELF

PORTRAIT

Date and place

of birth: April 12,

1952, Kansas

City, Mo.

Family: Wife

Debbie, son Mat

thew (deceased),

daughters Amy,

Katie, Emily

Occupation:

President of the

Donald W. Reyn

olds Foundation

Favorite movie: A

recent movie that

I really enjoyed

was Lincoln with

Daniel Day-Lewis

and just about any

Clint Eastwood

movie.

To relieve stress

I jog. It gives me

time to clear my

mind.

I’d like to know

more about

American history,

especially our

Founding Fathers

framing the con

stitution, and how

to cook. I like Bob

by Flay’s grilling

and cooking style.

My best tip for a

young architect

is to tackle every

project or assign

ment as if it is the

most important

project ever. Al

ways be willing to

listen and learn.

You never know

when an opportu

nity will come up

that could change

your life.

A smell that

makes me

nostalgic Farm

smells. My spare

time and sum

mers in high

school were spent

working on a

friend’s farm haul

ing hay, working

cattle and doing

other related

chores.

Last thing I read

Inferno by Dan

Brown. I read a lot

of historical mili

tary ÿ ction, W.E.B.

Griffin and David

McCullough’s non

ÿ ction work.

The secret to a

happy life is faith

in God and having

a spouse who is

your best friend.

People who

knew me in high

school thought

I was ambitious

and determined.

My favorite place

to vacation is

Hawaii

A word to sum

me up: controlledFAYETTEVILLE - When Steve Anderson set off for college, he didn’t know anything about architecture and he definitely didn’t expect to become a nationally respected architect who would change the face of the campus he was about to step foot on.

What he did know a thing or two about was baseball, basketball and track. As an athlete, Anderson and his friends played the sport of the season by day and in the evenings drove tractors and hauled hay like all good Missouri farm boys.

While his children were young, Anderson coached the church league baseball team and all family outings revolved around sports. In his household, they didn’t stay inside cooped up with video games or books. They were always out throwing the ball around in the last light of dusk.

CONSTRUCTING A HEALTHIER HORIZON

Anderson’s architectural legacy has been one of athletic spaces. He’s known for gymnasiums, fitness and health centers.

He was recently honored at the rededication of Vol Walker Hall, home to his alma mater, the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, which featured the dedication and opening of a new design center named after Anderson. The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place outsidethe new addition Sept. 12.

In Northwest Arkansas, his most recognizable works are the Health, Physical Education and Recreation (HPER) Building at UA, the Walton Lifetime Health Complex at John Brown University in Siloam Springs and the Marvin Altman Fitness Center in the Sparks Regional Medical Center of Fort Smith. His other works appear across the country, as far north as North Dakota and as far flung as Hawaii.

HPER was a challenge for him as a young architect. To make a building that would successfully meet the needs of the campus, he had to make offices and conference rooms in the same structure as an Olympic-size swimming pool, dance studios, gymnasiums, jogging tracks and racquetball courts, and each had its own design specifications and a long list of careful considerations.

Built in the early 1980s, the project came at a time when weightlifting was waning in favor of group fitness. The weight workout center within the complex is relatively small while premium space was devoted to studio classes. The concept of building design elevating grace over brawn was new.

“Dance studios in a fitness building were kind of an innovation at the time,” Anderson said. “We spent a lot of time working on the technicalities of dancefloors and spring-loaded floors, ballet bars and other things that were appropriate for high-impact aerobic activities and dance.”

“The whole industry was evolving back during that time,” he said. “There was a much higher interest in the general student population, in fitness. Not athletics, but fitness.”

Even the swimming pool was not standard fare.

“There’s a lot of technology involved in the design of a competitive swimming pool that the casual observer just doesn’t know about or see,” Anderson said. On the HPER, “Most of the money spent and time design was spent on the Olympic-size pool, which allowed the length of it to be changed from 25 meters to 25 yards, a big innovation back then.”

Design of athletic facilities is crucial for universities that compete for the best athletes in the country, and Anderson’s design reflected that need.

“Competitive swimmers were always looking for an advantage to get their times down as low as possible. So they could identify various pools that were supposed to be ‘faster’ than other pools.”

He carefully engineered features like the gutter and lane lines. The complexity of these technical specifications took two years to design and three years to build.

While some might balk at such a project, Anderson not only welcomed it, he continued to take similar projects.

“He was very knowledgeable when he came to work at the firm,” said Galen Hunter of MAHG Architecture in Fort Smith. “He knew a lot about the design of recreation facilities, college facilities and was very good at programming and the front end of the project.”

For the Walton Lifetime Health Complex, Anderson spent two years making plans.

“The client representative Bob Burns [JBU director of athletics] was the head of the physical education department there and we traveled around the country a lot looking at innovations in fitness and design of fitness health-based centers,” he said. “I enjoyed the time we spent researching and comparingfacilities.”

Hunter says client relations has always been a strength of Anderson’s.

“He was somebody the clients liked working with, who they felt comfortable with, and that he would deliver on that and was very knowledgeable about,” he said.

Before long, Anderson was being commissioned for similar structures within hospital-based facilities, whose specifications were nothing like recreation centers.

“I think that’s one thing I enjoyed about the profession was every building project was different …,” Anderson said. “When your practice goes all the way across the country … there are different requirements … or functions.”

As the president of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, Anderson continues to provide better health and fitness by funding cardiovascular, geriatric and aging healthprograms, and continuing the Charitable Food Distribution Initiative, which allowed for the construction of six food banks in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Nevada.

LEADING THE WAY

As a ninth-grader, he had to write an essay about a profession for a civics course. He never knew why, but he picked architecture.

“From then [on] I knew I wanted to be an architect,” he said. “So I never really pursued any other study.”

He applied to the UA college of architecture at Fayetteville.

“I didn’t know much about architecture,” he said. “I didn’t know exactly what architects did, in fact, when I came down here to school, I still didn’t know exactly what architects did, but I took art classes and drafting classes in high school and just really knew that’s what I wanted to do for a career.”

Two friends from his hometown also decided to study architecture with professors and architects Murray Smart, Ernie Jacks and Fay Jones.

Jones, whose name the college now bears, also had an architecture practice in Fayetteville. His senior seminar course was among the most formative college experiencesfor Anderson.

“He would take us to different locations and just talk about his life, his philosophies, and that had a major impact on me,” he said. “We went to his office and spent time with him, we got an opportunity to see his work and what he was doing … just seeing how he operated.”

Between a summer internship with Hood Rich Architects and Engineers in Springfield, Mo., and the inside look at the life of an architect like Jones, Anderson said he knew this is what he was meant to do. Beginning a family before college graduation was a challenge, but he found a promising professional opportunity with a company in Houston. As he prepared to move his young family, the oil embargo of 1973 changed things around the world and the job offer was withdrawn. Instead, Anderson went to work atMott, Mobley, McGowan & Griffin, an established firm in Fort Smith. The business had seasoned architects who had handled projects at UA, including Vol Walker Hall and Memorial Hall, which had been the student union during Anderson’s collegiate years.

Anderson was hired to help with additional campus projects, including renovations and additions to the Arkansas Fieldhouse, now known as Barnhill Arena, and the construction of the HPER Building.

He found a mentor in senior partner Ralph Mott and learned a lot about sustaining client service.

“I was still a young architect when I worked on Barnhill,” Anderson said. “I got to do door details and the various small pieces of it, but it was the first project I worked on as a professional. We [young hires] started outnot knowing anything, trying to learn everything we could about the profession.”

When the years of overseeing construction came to a close, Anderson moved back to Fort Smith, where a fresh start awaited him.

The stress of his early career had ended his first marriage and he had met Debbie, who would become the love of his life and wife of 30 years. A business offer came from James Childers, a former classmate, and it was there that he began a happy chapter of his life as partner at an architectural firm, husband and father.

He also became architectural consultant for Donrey Media Group.

“At the time, I was licensed in nine or 10 states, and did work for them anyplace they had a facility,” Anderson said. “I didn’t do just architectural work. I did evaluation of properties they were looking to purchase, building audits for compliance with local codes, estimates and evaluations for costs for expansions of new buildings … even construction observation.”

This one-man-band mindset is unusual in the architectural profession.

“I think he liked the planning part of it just as much as the design part,” Hunter said. “In fact, I saw where he really liked the programs for the projects, to get them off the ground … and he liked to handle the construction end.”

Anderson’s tendency to assume responsibility for whatever needed to be done extended far past the realms of work.

Joe Edwards, who is now the chief executive officer of Benefit Bank in Fort Smith, saw that right away.

“When I met Steve, my first home was getting mildew started on it and it needed painting very badly,” hesaid. “I couldn’t afford to pay somebody to paint our house at the time and [Anderson] just jumped right in there and helped me.”

He spent the weekend clearing mildew, painting the house in exchange for a meal here and there, and the two men and their families have remained friends ever since.

“There’s just story after story where he’s stepped in and just helped me or my family out,” Edwards said. “One year, I was driving home in the snow from work, and it was so heavy that I couldn’t get up one of the roads. So I parked the car and left it.Steve called my wife, then went out looking for me.”

While many friendships fizzle when big life changes happen, such as a move across the country, it never happened with them. If anything, it made their bond tighter. As chances would have it, the Andersons moved to Las Vegas shortly before Edwards’ daughter and her family moved there, and when a freak illness landed them in the emergency room, the Andersons stepped in to help, much like parents would.

Years later, Anderson’s generosity and initiative in the professional sphere meant he spent more than a decade overseeing projects through the entire process for Donrey Media buildings in Springdale, Rogers, Fort Smith, Texas,California and Hawaii. And it seemed to pay off for him.

“My staff used to give me a hard time because at one time I was flying about once a month or every six weeks to Hawaii to work on projects and I said, ‘Wow, what a gig!’” AN OPPORTUNITY HE COULDN’T TURN DOWN

His time with Donrey resulted in a professional relationship with Fred Smith, who was president and CEOof the company. Smith decided that Anderson’s expertise was needed on the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation board of trustees.

The board was formed in 1993 when Reynolds died and left his estate of roughly $850 million to continue to support projects of nonprofit organizations, which he had been doing since 1954. It has become known for repairing or building structures for education and health organizations and in its 20 years has financed 94 buildings through its capital grants program.

Clearly, architecture was a priority skill for the foundation.

“Fred wanted somebody on the board who knew something about construction and the design process. So he asked me to join,” Anderson said.

For a few years, he was on the Committee on Aging and Quality of Life, which funded the development of geriatric departments, while he continued his architectural firm in Fort Smith.

So when the foundation needed new leadership, “Fred asked me if I would consider closing my architectural practice and coming on full time as the executive director of the foundation,” he said. “It hit me a little bit by surprise. I wasn’t expecting that opportunity and really never thought about doing anything but architecture.

“I told him I had never run a business of that size,” and Anderson offered to go back to school to get a master of business administration but Smith wasn’t buying it. He said that Anderson already had the expertise necessary for the foundation.

After talking it over with his wife, the Andersons moved to Las Vegas, where he would become executive director and president of thefoundation.

In addition to health-centered projects and grants, the foundation supported educational and artistic endeavors. It funded the opening and operations of children’s museums in Arkansas, a seven-museum partnership known as the Arkansas Discovery Network and the four-museum partnership Oklahoma Museum Network and helped sustain them by facilitating a resource sharing arrangement.

Presidential museums have been of prime interest to the foundation as of late.

The foundation enabled the renovation of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif., and the creation of its hands-on training facility for teaching children about leadership. One educational outreach was a $30 million grant to the Smithsonian Institution to buy the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington,painted by Gilbert Stuart, which had been in the Smithsonian since the 1960s but recently went on sale when the painting’s owner claimed his inheritance.

The most recently funded project was a presidential library for Washington at Mount Vernon, which was scheduled to open last week.

“Washington had, before he died, planned to build a space on his estate to house his documents and books and letters,” Anderson said. “He wasn’t able to do it.”

The foundation made a location possible to house the Washington documents and manuscripts and make them available to scholars.

“They will be able to come and see those documents and be able to study and research there at the library,” he said. “That’s been very gratifying.

“I’m fortunate that I’ve had two very satisfying careers in my life.”