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Making a Difference: Jay and Debby Ricks
 Jay Ricks ’56 almost didn’t come to the University of Maryland. He was a
great runner but hadn’t worked very hard in high school, Ricks admits ruefully,
so his grades weren’t terrific. But the university’s track coach, Jim Kehoe,
helped Ricks enroll in a program that helped him catch up on his studies and get
his academics up to par. Working mostly with his fellow athletes, Ricks took
non-credit courses and special study programs. That was all it took to get him
back on track, and he was able to go on to study at the Smith School, then
called the School of Business and Public Administration.
One of the courses he found particularly interesting was business law. Ricks
went on to Georgetown Law School, where he finished first in his class. He
joined the Washington, D.C., law firm of Hogan & Hartson, and spent 28 years
practicing law specializing in telecommunications. He represented emerging
technologies and the new businesses that were seeking to compete with what had
historically been the monopoly service of AT&T and the Bell system. Later he
went into business with a former client; the two of them owned numerous cable
stations in rural areas.
Over the course of his career Ricks worked with many of the top players in
the nascent telecommunications industry. Once, Ricks went to AT&T representing
Howard Hughes. Hughes thought the public was eager to see more sports programs,
and he wanted to be the one broadcasting them. But this was in the days before
satellites, and AT&T owned all of the line-of-sight transmitting facilities that
would have permitted Hughes to broadcast his sports programs. The general
counsel of AT&T was sympathetic, but the company denied the request. On the
eastern shuttle back to Washington, D.C., Ricks met a short and skinny fellow
with a Texas drawl who had also been in New York to ask AT&T for data
transmission rights. The fellow turned out to be Ross Perot, and he too was
turned down.
“Imagine if AT&T had permitted Hughes to start an early version of ESPN back
in the 1960s,” laughs Ricks. “He would have been even richer than he was.”
Ricks never forgot that the university’s initial investment in him made his
successful career possible. “I appreciated the fact that Maryland had taken a
chance on me,” says Ricks. When he began to consider making a gift to the
school, Ricks found that a charitable remainder trust was a good financial
instrument for him. “I had some securities that had appreciated quite a bit in
value, and I was able to put them in a trust. It was a way to increase the
amount I could give without having to experience the tax on those gains,” says
Ricks.
Ricks is pleased to have the opportunity to support the Smith School, its
students and the vision of Dean Anand. “I’m very proud of what the Smith School
has done. It’s brought a lot of credibility and prestige to the Maryland
campus,” says Ricks.
“I have always admired those who are philanthropic. I’m not able to do it at
the same level as people like Robert Smith, but I just felt I had a debt of
gratitude and wanted to repay it as best I could,” says Ricks.
Ricks is married to wife Debby (Savage) Ricks ’55. The two have three
children and seven grandchildren and live in Arlington, Va., and Naples, Fla.
Get in Touch: Contact information for Jay and Debby Ricks is available on the
Alumni Network:
www.alumninetwork.rhsmith.umd.edu.
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