Charles Hardwick told a lecture hall full of students last month that decades from now they'll look back – just as he has done with gratitude and magnitude – on their time at Florida State University and the College of Business.

"Who is it you are going to remember?" he asked them.

They'll likely remember their best professors, he said.

If they're like him, they'll want to thank them, along with the college and university. And he's doing so generously.

Hardwick is providing a $450,000 gift to establish the college's Charles Hardwick Teaching Awards. It marks the second significant gift to the college from the retired Pfizer senior executive and former New Jersey assemblyman, who earned a bachelor's degree from the college in 1962, then an MBA in 1964.

His first gift, a marketing fellowship for the college, will be added to his latest donation – creating a pool of about $600,000 dedicated to rewarding teaching excellence.

Hardwick, a resident of Jupiter Island, Fla., and member of the college's Alumni Hall of Fame, said his new gift reflects his loyalty to FSU and his appreciation for university officials who – when he really needed a lift about 60 years ago – granted him a scholarship and then a teaching fellowship. It also honors his brother, sister and daughter, all of whom worked as teachers, he said.

Perhaps most of all, he said, his gift pays forward his debt of gratitude for "the teachers who meant so much to me."

"Of course, they're gone – I can't thank them," Hardwick said in a January interview with the college. "But I can do something in my own modest way to further strengthen the institution.''

Hardwick's gift renames the teaching recognition program established by Dean Michael Hartline and financially endows and supports the initiative.

The gift includes $150,000 in spendable funding for 10 years, plus $300,000 for an endowment fund. The college will use the funds to recognize and emphasize faculty members who make extra effort to become outstanding in their teaching.

"We genuinely thank Chuck Hardwick for continuing to demonstrate himself as a generous friend to our professors, students and College of Business family," Hartline said. "Chuck's latest gift will serve as a lasting tribute to his philanthropic vision and commitment to all of us, including our faculty members of today and business leaders of tomorrow."

During his talk to more than 200 students in Dr. Mike Brady's Principles of Marketing class, Hardwick implored students to nominate faculty members for awards that his gift will fund.

He suggested that they emphasize their own criteria and "what is important to you, the interaction you have with them, what you learned from them and their ability to help you at this really important time in your life."

Professors 'made a huge difference'

Hardwick, 80, said in his presentation to students that he figuratively sat where they sat, and he remembered "a handful of remarkable professors who made a huge difference in my life."

He cited Richard Baker, who taught in the college from 1950 to 1981; Warren B. Nation, a professor of marketing and an advisor for the MBA program; J. Richard Stevens, the head of the Marketing department who helped him get his teaching fellowship; and E.G. Bayfield, a faculty member in baking science and management, a department that long ago folded along with the scholarship but contributed significantly to Hardwick's rise.

He mentioned his father, a Wonder Bread employee and widower; Hardwick's mother died when he was 5 years old. He also mentioned Continental Baking Company, then the owner of Wonder Bread and Twinkie and creator of the scholarship for children of company employees.

FSU, which administered the scholarship, "literally saved my life," Hardwick told students.

In March of their senior years in high school in Akron, Ohio, Hardwick and his girlfriend, Patricia Johnson, became the subjects of news that prompted gasps in the late '50s: Patricia was pregnant. He played baseball and basketball and served as Student Council president. She would be valedictorian.

Yet as Hardwick explained in January, school rules dictated that she drop out and attend night school. But the school's principal – a hero in Hardwick's eyes and heart – declared the news a rumor that he couldn't substantiate, even though it was true, and allowed her to stay in school. She would even deliver the valedictorian speech.

They married at the end of that March – "that's all we ever considered," he said. About a month after news of her pregnancy," out of the blue came this scholarship to go to Florida State University," Hardwick said.

He was working in a grocery store and making 50 cents an hour as an usher in a theater. They moved to Tallahassee that fall, after the birth of a daughter, Virginia – and his scholarship covered their housing. A son, Charles Jr., was born at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital about three years later.

After he earned his bachelor's degree, Hardwick received an FSU teaching fellowship during which he worked on his MBA and embarked on studies in marketing.

"To this day, I can't thank Florida State enough for what it did for me," he said in his presentation to students.

Career at Pfizer and in politics

After he finished his MBA, Hardwick went to work for Continental Baking Company, whose assets ultimately would become absorbed by Hostess Brands. After not quite two years, he got a job as a sales representative at Pfizer, where he worked in various roles over parts of five decades and retired in 2006 as senior vice president of worldwide public affairs and as a member of the worldwide corporation's most senior management committee.

He also served as president of the Pfizer Foundation and worked to provide health care to AIDS patients in the U.S. and Africa, among other global initiatives. Toward the end of his career, he spent three months living and working in Vietnam to help alleviate trachoma, which the World Health Organization calls the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide.

Online reports boast that the company grew from $500 million to $50 billion in worldwide sales during his time there.

"I kind of smile at that," Hardwick said in his interview with the college. "I was doing my part, but I was not leading the company. I can't take the credit."

Yet he said he continues to take pride in the company for its global leadership in development of COVID-19 vaccines.

"You can't buy the publicity that Pfizer has had worldwide because of its investment and successful deployment of the vaccine," Hardwick said. "It's just fantastic. It's going to serve the company and employees and, most importantly, the patients and the medical community for a long time."

Hardwick will playfully tell you that he enjoys talking about himself and his career, yet he presents a humble, frank and sometimes fun approach to his life, work and philanthropy. On the day he signed his latest gift agreement, he told students in Dr. Brady's class that if he were in their seats, his questions would include, "Who is this old man who's up here speaking to me?"

Where would he begin?

His extraordinary life includes 14 years as a New Jersey assemblyman – a part-time elected role that he served while working at Pfizer. That included four years as speaker of the state's General Assembly.

In 1989, he took a six-month leave of absence from Pfizer to seek the Republican nomination for New Jersey governor but lost in a tight race to Jim Courter, who would lose the general election to Democrat James Florio. He served one more term in the Assembly, then chose not to run again.

"Fourteen years was enough," he said.

Along the way, he and Patricia divorced after 28 years, and Hardwick later married Sheilagh Mylott. They have an adopted son, Austin, who's now 13 years old.

His political career included service on Ronald Reagan's Presidential Advisory Committee on Federalism and, after his time in the New Jersey Assembly, an appointment by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as vice chair of the New York City Council on the Environment.

Hardwick's son, Charles Hardwick Jr. – owner of San Diego-based Dancing Panda Marketing who earned a bachelor's degree in economics and computer science from FSU in 1984 – finds his father's life so compelling that he did a series of Zoom interviews with him during the beginning of the pandemic and posted them on chuckhardwick.com. The videos include participation from Hardwick's daughter, Virginia Hardwick, now a lawyer and partner at Pennsylvania-based Hardwick Benfer LLC.

The interviews cover everything from their father's childhood to his political career and includes his time as an FSU student and his lifelong devotion to his alma mater.

Hardwick reflected further in his January interview with the college, saying: "That scholarship was a lifesaver. It just cemented my love and appreciation of FSU – and you bet I give back."

— Pete Reinwald

TOP PHOTO: Alumni Hall of Fame member Charles Hardwick, right, signs his latest gift agreement with Dean Michael Hartline.

SECOND PHOTO: Former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter enjoy a moment with Charles Hardwick, then a top executive at Pfizer, during an early 1990s visit with company officials to discuss global health care initiatives in underdeveloped countries. Hardwick said conversations with Carter ultimately led to establishment of the Infectious Diseases Institute, established in 2002 in Kampala, Uganda.