It was fall term 1975, shortly before Christmas break, and things weren’t going so well for Bill Dowell.

A sophomore from Tampa, Dowell had come to BSC with high hopes and a heavy burden. The oldest of four, with a father who had died at age 39, he knew money back home was tight. Although he loved life on the Hilltop — his friends, his Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers, and especially a pretty blonde AOPi from Nashville — the weight of responsibility was pulling him toward home.

“Late one night until two in the morning, I sat in the living room of the SAE house talking with four of my fraternity brothers,” he recalls. “I told them I’d made the decision to go back to Tampa because I needed to help out at home.  

“They listened, and then they told me this: ‘You need BSC. You need the guidance you will get from this fraternity, and you need what this college has to offer you to be what you are supposed to be.’” 

Dowell finally crawled into bed and woke a few hours later to find two envelopes on his nightstand. Each contained a check for $500 —  a lot of money in 1975, and enough to cover a fourth of his tuition. 

He gave the checks back to his brothers — grateful but determined to find his own way. 

“Their generosity meant the world to me,” he says, “and it made me commit to finding a way to stay. I got jobs on campus — I was a dorm monitor at Hanson Hall, which was a girls’ dorm then, and gave tours for the admission office. I worked off-campus at a clothing store during the school year and worked over the summers to save up. I stretched every dollar.” 

His last job on campus was interning for President Neal Berte — an experience he says was “worth every dime my family and I spent for me to go there. I learned so much from him.”  

Dowell graduated in 1978 with a degree in political science. A year later, he married the pretty blonde AOPi from Nashville.  

(Coincidentally — or not — Sandra Johnson’s parents met Bill’s mother at the parents’ reception on move-in day of their freshman year. Afterward each repeatedly suggested to their child that the two students should meet. “For weeks after that, my mom would ask me if I’d met Sandra yet, and I’d say no, and she’d tell me I needed to,” he says. Sandra reports getting the same from her own parents until they finally did meet later that year and began dating.) 

Looking back at what it took for him to stay, Dowell says, “The bottom line is that decision changed my life and provided me with opportunities and connections beyond my wildest dreams. I moved back to Tampa after graduation but wanted to be back in Birmingham, and so I called Bob Glenn in Student Affairs and told him I wanted to go into the financial services industry.  

“He called Buddy Stanford, my SAE brother who was working at Protective Life at the time, and next thing you know I’m over there for a meeting. That same day, I also met Steve Briggs (BSC ’71), who was working there, and I ended up starting my career at Protective.  

“All of that was because of the Birmingham-Southern community.” 

Dowell began his career at Protective Life, and later founded a company now known as Vision Financial Group. He has held numerous leadership positions in the insurance industry, is a past president of the BSC Alumni Board, and is involved in civic and charitable life in Shelby County. He and Sandra are active members at Asbury United Methodist Church, have two adult daughters, and are very active grandparents of three, with one more on the way in June.  

Many years after his BSC connections led him forward, Dowell had the opportunity to pay back what he had received. “I was asked to speak to a marketing class on campus, and mentioned that I was looking for an intern,” he says. “The very next day, I had a resume in my hand from Jay Stubbs, who became that intern. We were at the beginning of technology in our industry, and Jay had a tremendous influence on my business right from the start.” 

Stubbs, who graduated in 1999, has since built his own successful career in the insurance industry. Now Gulf Coast Director for Concourse Financial Group in Mobile and the host of a podcast on InsuranceRadio.com, he credits Dowell with giving him a strong start. 

Relationships Dowell formed in those early days have endured. “Through the years, all of my trusted advisors have been BSC graduates — my CPA, my attorney, my doctor until he retired, and others — and all but one have been SAEs, though one is an ATO,” he says. 

That lone ATO notwithstanding, SAE has remained a big part of Dowell’s life. He has served on the fraternity’s Supreme Council and on its foundation board, chaired its investment committee, and been active with its leadership development efforts. The Dowells have also been loyal supporters of BSC, including the endowed scholarship they established to support rising seniors who are leaders of SAE and AOPi.  

Such devotion can be traced back to college days, including a late night that in hindsight was a turning point. “Those guys reaching out to me, and what BSC did for me, made such a difference in my life,” he says. “I owe everything to BSC.”