North Carolina State University Athletics
Behind The Scenes With Tony Haynes: Day Dreams
5/7/2002 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
May 7, 2002
By Tony Haynes
Wayne T. Day is a dreamer. Somewhere along the line, the 1965 graduate of NC State must have had some big dreams for his future. You see, the same man who has pledged $5 million to the Wolfpack Club's Goal Line Drive Campaign remembers what it was like to have virtually nothing.
"North Carolina State has been great for me," said Day, who majored in Chemical Engineering. "I came here with not too much education and no money. The university helped pay my way through school. When I went to college, I was a 16-year old baby. I didn't know much about anything in the outside world. From the time I was 14 years of age, I ran our tobacco farm because my father was an electrician who took care of the family."
But Wayne T. Day had dreams, Day dreams, if you will.
Now the CEO of John Kirlin, Inc., Day oversees a mechanical contracting company that has been involved in the construction of the Entertainment and Sports Arena, Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the MCI Center in Washington D.C. One of the company's biggest projects right now is the reconstruction of the West Wall of the Pentagon, which was heavily damaged in the mindless terrorist attack of September 11.
It was on that tragic day in fact that Day anxiously waited to hear from approximately 40 of his employees who were working on other projects inside the Pentagon when it was rammed by a highjacked jetliner. Fortunately, they all made it.
"We had a young guy that was working with us in the Pentagon the day the plane hit it," Day recalled. "He looked out the window and saw the plane coming directly at the Pentagon. He ran down a corridor and when he got to the end, the door to a storage room was open. He went inside and the door swung back and latched. The fireball from the plane was coming right down behind him. If the door wouldn't have swung back and latched, he would have been cooked like a lot of other people. He walked away without a scratch; he was in the office the next day with his two-year old son. There was no way anybody was going to take his son away from him."
One doesn't go from the tobacco fields of Roxboro to sitting as a CEO of a multi-million dollar company without encountering a handful of life shaping experiences along the way. Two years after coming to NC State, Day did his time in the military, service that was mandatory in those days.
"I volunteered to go to Korea, believe it or not," he said. "The reason is because my dad had gotten shot in the arm there during the war. It turned out to be 15 of the best months I ever had because I grew up."
He then worked his way up the business ladder until reaching the lofty perch he now occupies. The Day family's gift equals the largest ever at NC State. The money will help the Wolfpack Club pay for the beautiful knew Carter-Finley Stadium Football Center that will be open for business in early 2003. In a ceremony to be conducted prior to an NC State home game next fall, the field at Carter-Finley will be named in honor of the Day family.
During a recent dinner gathering at the home NC State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, Day spent some time with the CEO of the Wolfpack football program, Chuck Amato. Not surprisingly, the major theme of their chat revolved around leadership.
"We really didn't talk football too much," Day said. "It was more about philosophies of motivating people and how to get it done. It's all about getting people in the right spots and motivating them to do it."
Amato and Day have something else in common: both are big dreamers. They have a reoccurring dream that anything is possible. Last year, Amato told his players that it was all right for them to dream about playing for a national championship. "Why not us?" Amato likes to say.
Thanks to the generosity of people like Wayne Day and family, that dream may one day become a reality.
