The School of Business Administration at the University of Mississippi honored business giants and innovators Thursday (Sept. 24) by inducting them into the second class of its Hall of Fame.
Eight remarkable individuals who have demonstrated the fundamentals of the Business School’s mission and vision through their successful careers and deeply committed service to society were tapped for the Hall of Fame. Two other alumni were honored with outstanding service awards.
Ken Cyree, dean of the Business School, introduced the Hall of Fame inductees: Thomas Colbert Sr. of Flowood, Mississippi; George Terry Crawford of Ocala, Florida; James Creekmore of Madison, Mississippi; Wade Creekmore Jr. of Jackson, Mississippi; Robert Dunlap of Batesville, Mississippi; Joseph Mac Haik of Houston, Texas; the late Edward Maloney of Jackson; and Ambassador John Palmer of Jackson.
Bill Fry of Bluffton, South Carolina, and Oxford, Mississippi, and Donna Ruth Roberts of Oxford, were honored with service awards for their numerous contributions to the Business School.
“As we honor these outstanding alumni, let us reflect on the values that drive success — integrity, innovation, perseverance and a commitment to making a difference,” Cyree said at the ceremony, which was also attended by UM Chancellor Glenn F. Boyce. “Their stories inspire us all to reach new heights and uphold the proud traditions of our School of Business Administration.”
The Business School is composed of a quarter of the university’s total enrollment with approximately 6,250 students, representing a more than 6% increase from last year and continuing to be the largest in the state.
Hall of Fame inductees are:
Thomas Colbert Sr. is senior board chair for Community Bancshares of Mississippi Inc., the parent company of Community Bank, for which he is also the senior board chair.
Colbert earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in banking and finance from the university in 1962. He attended Senior Bank Management School at Harvard University, the School of Bank Public Relations and Marketing in Chicago, Illinois, and the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University. He is a longtime supporter of his alma mater.
When Colbert joined Community Bank in 1968 as president and CEO, it was a one-office, $6 million bank in Forest, Mississippi. Under his leadership, Community Bancshares of Mississippi Inc. has become one of the Southeast’s most successful financial institutions with about 850 employees and nearly $5 billion in assets and 55 offices across four states.
He is a 2012 inductee to the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame.
Terry Crawford graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Business Administration. He has served for 27 years on the Business School Advisory Board and served on Now & Ever: The Campaign for Ole Miss Business School committee. He established the Mitchell D. Crawford Eagle Scout Scholarship as a memorial to his son, a 1999 business school graduate who died at 34 and Terry Crawford also contributed to the Holman Hall expansion.
Crawford joined Pioneer Products in Ocala, Florida, as a marketing product manager. The company supplied party items to supermarkets and was acquired by the Betty Crocker Division of General Mills. He became its vice president of marketing. In 1976, Crawford founded Conimar Corp., which manufactures plastic houseware items for retailers including Macy’s, Target, Walmart, Amazon, Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby, Cracker Barrel and Buc-ee’s.
His 41 years of active industry leadership include serving as chair and board member of the International Housewares Association.
Jimmy Creekmore is a pioneering entrepreneur and co-founder of C Spire — an advanced technology company and the largest privately held wireless carrier in the United States — which serves consumers and business customers with wireless, fiber and managed IT services.
With his brother, Wade Creekmore, Jimmy Creekmore helped transform a series of rural telephone companies into a cutting-edge telecommunications enterprise that has become a cornerstone of innovation in Mississippi and the nation.
Creekmore graduated from the university in 1959 with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. He then earned a juris doctor degree from the Ole Miss School of Law in 1968 and clerked for the Mississippi Supreme Court.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the C Spire Foundation was established to help employees affected by the storm. It now provides approximately 40 scholarships per year to students at Mississippi’s eight public universities.
Wade Creekmore is co-founder of C Spire, which was established with his brother as mentioned above.
After graduating from the university with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1965, he served in the U.S. Navy as part of an elite group known as “frogmen,” predecessors to modern Navy SEALs. He earned a juris doctor degree from the Ole Miss School of Law in 1967.
With a deep commitment to community enrichment, Creekmore founded the Southwest Mississippi Chess Foundation and the Franklin Chess Center to provide chess instruction and sponsor tournaments for Franklin County K-12 grade students.
Bob Dunlap earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1951 from the university. From 1954 until today, he has been CEO of Dunlap & Kyle Co., a Batesville-based wholesale tire distributor co-founded by his father in 1929.
What began as a junkyard is now one of Mississippi’s top privately owned companies and one of the nation’s largest independent tire dealers. Dunlap & Kyle serves all 50 states and 12 countries and is the parent company of the Gateway and Hesselbein Tire companies.
Dunlap has served on the Business School Advisory Board and on the UM Foundation Board. He has supported Ole Miss Athletics, the business school, the Patterson School of Accountancy and the Ole Miss Alumni Association. His company has been engaged with business school classes to provide students with real-life experiences.
Mac Haik graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in marketing and sales in 1968. He was co-captain of the Ole Miss football team and is a longtime alumni donor.
He was a first draft choice of the then NFL Houston Oilers. Haik was inducted into the UM Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001 and the UM Alumni Hall of Fame in 2018.
Haik established Mac Haik Enterprises (MHE), a Houston-based investment company which includes a full-service commercial real estate affiliate. The organization now employs approximately 3,200 associates and generates revenues in excess of $3.4 billion per year.
The 11 affiliated companies of Mac Haik Enterprises oversee the development and management of commercial real estate and health care facilities, asset acquisition and disposition, facilities management, property management, leasing, project management, construction, janitorial services and media advertising, as well as restaurants and hotel ownership. Mac Haik Automotive Group is the largest independent dealership in Texas and the 15th largest in the nation.
The late Eddie Maloney earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1972 and later served as president of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. He served as president of the Business Advisory Board, member of the Ole Miss Athletics Committee, officer of Sigma Nu fraternity and longtime donor to his alma mater.
Maloney became president and CEO of Cowboy Maloney’s Home Store, the appliance and electronics retail company founded in 1952 by his parents. The company acquired Electric City from Southern Company electric utility in 1991 and is known today as Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City with 13 stores across Mississippi.
Cowboy Maloney’s secured its place in retail history by selling the world’s first DirectTV home satellite system. The company went on to serve as the launchpad for other groundbreaking technologies including satellite radio and selling the nation’s first Sirius car audio system, as well as DishNET, the high-speed satellite internet service.
Philanthropist, entrepreneur and national leader, Ambassador John Palmer made his way from Corinth, Mississippi, to Ole Miss on a basketball scholarship and earned a Bachelor of Arts in accounting in 1956 followed by an MBA. His career as a telecommunications pioneer began in 1965 when he helped merge nine paging companies in the South with a New York firm and created Mobile Communications Corporation of America (MCAA).
As president and CEO, he took MCCA public in 1981. In 1988, he founded the first two-way paging company, SkyTel, another nationwide success.
Palmer served on the boards of three NYSE companies and as chair of the National Symphony Orchestra. He also provided leadership on the U.S. President’s Export Council.
In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Portugal. His belief that good students were as important as good professors led him to contribute $1 million to the MBA program in 1986. In 1987, he was inducted into the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame and in 2023 was honored with the Ole Miss Women’s Council for Philanthropy Legacy Award.
Service Award recipients:
After earning his 1980 Bachelor of Public Administration degree, Bill Fry was commissioned as a naval officer, serving aboard the USS Bowen and then in the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program in Washington, D.C.
He earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1990, then worked at the Dixie Group, a publicly held company where he was president from 1995 to 2000. He then served as CEO of Bell Sports and became CEO of Bell Riddell Holdings.
In 2007, he served as CEO of Oreck Corp., then the nation’s largest direct-to-consumer marketer of vacuum cleaners and air purifiers. It was owned by American Securities, a New York-based private equity firm, where he became head of its resources group and assisted portfolio companies with value creation.
Fry has served on the Business Advisory Board. He helped found the Rebel Venture Capital Fund, and he and his wife, Lee Anne, served as co-chairs of the business school’s Now & Ever campaign. Fry provides leadership on the executive committee of the Ole Miss Alumni Association and was inducted into its Alumni Hall of Fame in 2012. He also received the Distinguished Finance Executive Award in 2021 and is a longtime donor.
Donna Ruth Roberts, a native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ole Miss in English and sociology in 1961 and took extensive course work for her MBA at the University of Memphis.
For most of her career, Roberts served as the co-owner of New Colony Homes Inc., a single-family construction and real estate development company.
For many years, she served on the Ole Miss School of Business Administration Advisory Board and has provided longtime private support to many areas of the business school.
After being appointed by Gov. Phil Bryant, Roberts served until this month on the Republican State Executive Committee. Beginning with Gov. Haley Barbour, she served on political campaigns for many Mississippi state officers.
For more information on how to support the UM School of Business Administration, contact Angela Brown, executive director for development, at browna@olemiss.edu or 662-915-3181.
By Tina H. Hahn/UM Development