Athletic departments around the country were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. At Tennessee, at-will employee earning between $50,000 and $150,000 had their monthly earnings reduced from November through March. A UT donor, however, has now made it as if those reductions never happened.

Tennessee announced Friday that longtime donor Larry Pratt recently provided a cash gift of $140,000 to cover the pandemic-related salary reductions for close to 140 Tennessee Athletics staffers. Thanks to Pratt’s gift, it will be as though the November-March reductions never occurred.

“So many times, we forget that the building blocks of an organization start at the ground roots—not at the top,” Pratt said, via the program announcement. “Every person is critical. From ushers to assistants—everyone is vital to our success. I just want them to feel that way and let them know they’re just as important as everybody else.”

Pratt graduated from UT’s College of Business in 1973 and is the chairman/CEO of First Savings Mortgage Corporation in Washington, D.C., which he founded in 1988. He has supported UT athletics with numerous significant contributions, including a $1 million gift to the STEP UP capital campaign in 2003, a $5 million lead gift that paved the way for construction of Pratt Pavilion, Tennessee’s state-of-the-art basketball practice facility, and a $2 million gift for the Larry Pratt Basketball Locker Room Complex in Thompson-Boling Arena.