Ole Miss Business School Honors 10 Alumni

Eight individuals who have demonstrated the fundamentals of the business school's mission and vision through their successful careers and committed service to society were tapped for the Hall of Fame on Thursday (Sept. 24). Two other alumni were honored with outstanding service awards.

This year's inductees are: Thomas Colbert Sr., of Flowood; George Terry Crawford, of Ocala, Florida; James Creekmore, of Madison; Wade Creekmore Jr., of Jackson; Robert Dunlap, of Batesville; 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, and Donna Ruth Roberts, of Oxford, were honored with service awards for their contributions to the 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," said Ken Cyree, the school's dean, at the ceremony. "Their stories inspire us all to reach new heights and uphold the proud traditions of our School of Business Administration."

The school is the state's largest business program and constitutes a quarter of the university's total enrollment, with some 6,250 students, representing a more than 6% increase from last year.

Hall of Fame inductees are:

Colbert is senior board chair for Community Bancshares of Mississippi Inc., the parent company of Community Bank, for which he is also senior board chair.

He earned a bachelor's degree in banking and finance from the university in 1962 before attending Senior Bank Management School at Harvard University, the School of Bank Public Relations and Marketing in Chicago, 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. 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.

Crawford graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Business Administration. He has served 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 also contributed to the Holman Hall expansion.

He joined Pioneer Products in Ocala, Florida, as a marketing product manager and became its vice president of marketing. The company supplied party items to supermarkets and was acquired by the Betty Crocker Division of General Mills.

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 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 – a technology company and the nation's largest privately held wireless carrier – which provides wireless, fiber and managed IT services.

With his brother, Wade, Jimmy Creekmore helped transform a series of rural telephone companies into a cutting-edge telecommunications enterprise. He graduated from the university in 1959 with a Bachelor of Business Administration. He then earned a Juris Doctor from the UM School of Law in 1968 and clerked for the Mississippi Supreme Court.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the company established the C Spire Foundation to help employees affected by the storm. It provides some 40 scholarships per year to students at Mississippi's eight public universities.

Wade Creekmore is co-founder of C Spire with his brother.

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 from Ole Miss in 1967.

Committed 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.

Dunlap earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1951 from the university. Since 1954, he has been CEO of Dunlap & Kyle Co., a Batesville-based tire wholesaler co-founded by his father in 1929.

What began as a junkyard is 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. He also is a major supporter of the Natchez Trace Council of Scouting America, formerly known as Boy Scouts of America.

His company helps provide Ole Miss business students with real-world experiences.

Haik graduated with a bachelor's degree 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 Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001 and the UM Alumni Hall of Fame in 2018.

Haik established Mac Haik Enterprises, a Houston-based investment company that includes a commercial real estate affiliate. The organization employs about 3,200 associates and generates more than $3.4 billion in revenue per year.

The group's 11 affiliated companies 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 nation's 15th largest.

The late Maloney earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1972 and later served as president of the Ole Miss Alumni Association.

He was 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 sold the world's first DirectTV home satellite system. The company went on to serve as a launchpad for other groundbreaking technologies including satellite radio – selling the nation's first Sirius car audio system – and DishNET, a satellite internet service.

Philanthropist, entrepreneur and national leader Palmer made his way from Corinth to Ole Miss on a basketball scholarship and earned a bachelor's degree 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 to create Mobile Communications Corporation of America.

As president and CEO, he took MCCA public in 1981. In 1988, he founded the first two-way paging company, SkyTel. 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.

President George W. Bush appointed him U.S. ambassador to Portugal in 2001. His belief that good students were as important as good professors led him to contribute $1 million to the MBA program in 1986. He is a member of the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame and was honored with the Ole Miss Women's Council for Philanthropy Legacy Award in 2023.

Service Award recipients:

After earning his Bachelor of Public Administration in 1980, 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 and 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.

Fry served on the Business Advisory Board, helped found the Rebel Venture Capital Fund and he and his wife, Lee Anne, served as co-chairs of the 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.

Roberts, a Yazoo City native, earned a bachelor's degree in English and sociology from Ole Miss in 1961 and took extensive course work for her MBA at the University of Memphis.

For most of her career, she was co-owner of New Colony Homes Inc., a single-family construction and real estate development company. For many years, Roberts served on the Ole Miss School of Business Administration Advisory Board and has provided 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 worked on political campaigns for many Mississippi state officials.

For more information on supporting the School of Business Administration, contact Angela Brown, executive director for development, at browna@olemiss.edu or 662-915-3181.

Top: Inductees to the 2025 Hall of Fame class for the School of Business Administration gather outside the Duff Center for Science and Technology Innovation on Thursday (Sept. 24). Photo by Bill Dabney/UM Foundation