$3 million gift to foster art of writing at Columbus State

A $3 million endowment from local businessman and author Donald L. Jordan will help Columbus State University foster the art of writing.

A manuscript competition, an endowed professorship in creative writing and a study abroad service learning program are among the initiatives CSU will establish thanks to Jordan’s generosity — the largest gift made to the university’s College of Letters and Sciences and one of the largest in the institution’s 58-year history.

“This wide-ranging gift from Mr. Jordan will not only support the students in our creative writing program but will also give our students who travel abroad the opportunity to come back and share their experiences with others through their writing,” Dennis Rome, the college’s dean, said in CSU’s news release.

The endowment will support the following new programs:

▪  The Donald L. Jordan Prize in Traditional American Writing will be open to published and unpublished writers nationwide. This manuscript competition will award annual prizes for the entries that “best represent the traditional American values of responsibility, gratitude, generosity, faith and love,” according to the release. The panel of judges will include “at least one eminent American writer.” Columbus State University Press will publish the winner’s work and distribute it nationally.

▪  The Donald L. Jordan Endowed Professorship in Creative Writing will supplement a CSU Department of English faculty member’s salary. The faculty member will teach courses and oversee the Donald L. Jordan Prize in Traditional American Writing as well as a writing conference “every two to three years on campus to publicize writing that honors traditional American values,” according to the release.

▪  The Donald L. Jordan Study Abroad Service Learning Program will enable as many as 10 students and two faculty members to participate for as long as two weeks in a humanitarian project in a developing country. The CSU group will collaborate with organizations in that country. “Program participants will engage in life-changing work and, following the experience, will write about how responsibility, generosity, faith and love can be used for the good of others,” according to the release.

In an interview Thursday with the Ledger-Enquirer, Jordan said, “I’m a behind-the-scenes guy. I’m not looking to make a big splash for me, but I hope others would join me in this. If we could grow that endowment, we could do a lot more. The bigger that prize, the better writers we will attract.”

Jordan, a Columbus High graduate who declined to disclose his age, said he had to become his family’s breadwinner at 16 when his father, Cecil, was diagnosed with colon cancer. He took over his father’s struggling hardware business and started a fence company. By 18, he had earned enough money to build his parents a new house. He expanded the D.L. Jordan Company into painting, roofing, remodeling and general contracting. Now, he develops and invests in real estate.

And since he was “called by God” to start writing at age 14, Jordan has carved time out of his successful vocation to express his love of literature though his avocation as a novelist and story writer.

At 21, Jordan used the pen name Leroy Donald when he wrote his first novel, a Western called “Trail to Lometa,” published by Thomas Bouregy & Co.

In 2011, Jordan’s “The Creation: A Letter” was published by Outskirts Press, which described the book as “a primer of the simple human virtues we would want to pass on to our children and grandchildren.”

In 2013, Outskirts Press also published Jordan’s novel titled “Happy Lightning,” about a man who must change his life’s dreams because his wife’s death makes him a single father.

Jordan, who also has written for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, laughed when he said his approximately two dozen works “still have hope, and some are in the slush pile. I’m not thinking that Donald Jordan will ever be a Pulitzer Prize winner.”

But he does hope his endowment helps produce one. Jordan said his pastor, the Rev. Jimmy Elder of First Baptist Church, suggested his legacy could be “making good books without my pen touching the paper.”

Intending his gift to become “a small instrument in bringing people back to traditional American writing and values,” Jordan criticized the quality of modern popular fiction.

“I am so concerned about the literature in our nation and the direction we are going with the voices kids are hearing and the movies they are seeing,” he said.

Jordan summed up his motivation to establish the endowment when he said, “I believe you should give back to the world at least as much as you get out of it, if not more. The gift comes back to the giver.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 1:12 PM with the headline "$3 million gift to foster art of writing at Columbus State."