Bill Bloking’s career took him around the world. And while the mechanical engineering grad may have retired in Perth, Australia, 11,500 miles from his alma mater, none of it would have been possible without the University of South Carolina.
“I’m still realizing some of that now,” Bloking explains. “USC prepared me so well for the engineering world, but more importantly I learned a lot about diplomacy and interacting with different sorts of people, which held me in very good stead in my business career. The foundation for all of that was set during my years at Carolina.”
He’s not kidding. In his 25 years with Exxon and his subsequent tenure at BHP, Bloking consulted at refineries in the U.S. and Europe, and at an iron ore facility in Venezuela. He managed natural gas operations in Indonesia. He also leveraged his strategic planning expertise in boardrooms worldwide.
Now retired, he wants to help future students achieve their own career goals, and so he established the William F. Bloking First-Generation Scholars Fund, which will support Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing first-generation students and programs.
“The idea is to provide a pathway for people who haven’t had all of the advantages that my kids had, for example,” he says. “Let them see that if they’re prepared to work at it, they can do anything they want, and if they keep the grades up, they’ll be funded through.”
It’s a story he knows well. One of nine kids, Bloking was raised by working class parents in Connecticut. After high school, he went to work for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft — “I grew up in a family where college just wasn’t an important thing,” he says — and then joined the Army.
“I don’t think I knew people that had gone to university until I worked at Pratt & Whitney. But I was with all these engineers, and I was so impressed with their understanding of the way things worked, the physics and all the rest.”
“The idea is to provide a pathway for people who haven’t had all of the advantages that my kids had, for example. Let them see that if they’re prepared to work at it, they can do anything they want, and if they keep the grades up, they’ll be funded through.”
After a tour of duty in Vietnam, he was stationed at Fort Jackson when USC popped up on his radar.
“I was a bit lost and wasn’t quite sure what to do,” Bloking says. “But I was a veteran, I had the GI Bill, and Carolina had a nice reputation, certainly in respect to the engineering school. And Carolina was just the right mix for me. I just had a fantastic experience.”
It wasn’t just his classes that made an impression. It was the Frank McGuire era at USC, and Bloking quickly fell in love with basketball. Little did he know he’d one day end up a co-owner of a professional basketball team, the Perth Wildcats. And little did he know he’d one day be talking hoops with USC President Michael Amiridis.
“When I first met him we were talking about academics, which is what you’d expect, and somehow it came up that he was a basketball player in Thessaloniki, Greece,” Bloking recalls. “Well, when I was working for Exxon, as it happens, I worked in Thessaloniki, Greece. That started a completely different conversation.”
It also led to the invitation to join President Amiridis at the women's Final Four, where Bloking sat with former Gamecock standout Alex English.
“Alex English wouldn’t have known me from a bar of soap,” he explains. “But I said, ‘You know, you and your teammates were my inspiration. You’re responsible for my love of the game, and now I’m part owner of a professional team in Australia!’”
That’s not why Bloking established the First-Generation Scholars Fund, but it helps illustrate the effect that his college experience had on his career. It also underscores his commitment to his alma mater and to giving back.
“I encourage people to think strongly about how you can give back because we’ve all gotten so much from the university,” he says. “In my case it created a life that I honestly could not have imagined. Wouldn’t it be nice if others could do that for someone else?”