July 9, 2024
Seven to be Honored at Homecoming for Achievement, Service
By Jim Urbanek
The Ole Miss Alumni Association will recognize seven distinguished alumni with its highest annual awards as part of Homecoming 2024.
University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame inductees for 2024 are: Robert R. “Bobby” Bailess (BBA 73, JD 76), of Vicksburg; David Ward Kellum (BA 80), of Water Valley; John Maxwell (BA 66, MA 68), of Jackson; Suzan Brown Thames (BA 68), of Ridgeland; and William G. Yates III (BBA 93), of Biloxi.
Created in 1974, the Hall of Fame honors select alumni who have made an outstanding contribution to their country, state or the University of Mississippi through good deeds, services or philanthropies that have perpetuated the good name of Ole Miss.
Jon C. Turner (BBA 78), of Jackson, will receive the Alumni Service Award for service to the university and the Alumni Association over an extended period.
Mallory McCormack (MBA 15), of Huntsville, Alabama, will receive the Outstanding Young Alumni Award, which honors alumni who have shown exemplary leadership throughout their first 15 years of alumni status in both their careers and dedication to Ole Miss.
“We are excited for this opportunity to celebrate some of the university’s most successful and notable alumni,” said Ole Miss Alumni Association CEO Kirk Purdom (BA 93). “These inductees stand out both with their career accomplishments and with their service to Ole Miss and their communities.”
The Alumni Association will host a gala for the honorees on Thursday, Sept. 26, in the Gertrude C. Ford Ballroom at The Inn at Ole Miss. Those interested in attending the dinner must register in advance by calling the Alumni Association office at 662-915-7375.
Hall of Fame Awards
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Robert R. “Bobby” Bailess is a native of Vicksburg. He received his undergraduate degree in business administration from Ole Miss in 1973 after playing linebacker for the Rebels for the 1971 through 1973 seasons. Bailess received his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law and was admitted to the Mississippi Bar in 1976. He has continued to practice with the same firm, now known as Bailess & Rector, in Vicksburg.
Bailess is a Fellow of the Mississippi Bar Foundation and served as a member of the Board of Bar Commissioners. He was appointed to numerous committees of the Bar, such as the Committee on Professional Responsibility, three years as chairman, the Commission on Judicial Performance, the Special Committee on Judicial Election Campaign Interference and the Complaint Tribunal. He was elected president of the Mississippi Bar Association and received the 2009 Law Alumnus of the Year Award and is a past president of the Law Alumni Chapter.
Bailess served as a board member and as chairman of the University of Mississippi Foundation and is presently serving on the executive committee of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. He was president of the Ole Miss Alumni Association in 2017-18.
In his hometown of Vicksburg, Bailess has served as chairman and board member of several organizations within the community.
Bailess and his wife, the former Natalie Waring (BAEd 73), are members of Crawford Street United Methodist Church, where he has served on numerous committees, as a member of the board of trustees and as chairman of the Administrative Board.
They have three children, Russ, Katherine and Becca, as well as five grandchildren, Bailess, Adeline, Sam, Eloise and Miles.
“I am truly humbled to be included in present company, as well as those previously inducted,” said Bailess. “It is an unexpected and overwhelming honor that is very much appreciated.”
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David Ward Kellum currently serves as director of broadcasting for the Learfield Ole Miss Radio Network and Assistant to the Athletic Director for Publicity for Ole Miss Athletics. During his time as an Ole Miss student, Kellum served as the Voice of Ole Miss women’s basketball and baseball programs for the local radio station WSUH/WOOR and was a deejay, program director and production director.
After graduation, he married Mary Kuehn (BSW 80). Kellum continued broadcasting Ole Miss women’s basketball and Ole Miss baseball games and added Northwest Community College sports to his ever-growing broadcast duties. Kellum was hired by Northwest Community College and Three Rivers Planning & Development District to serve at the WIN Job Center in Oxford as Rapid Response Coordinator and the C2C Youth Coordinator. He worked there until his retirement in 2021.
In the fall of 1989, Kellum was selected to be the Voice of the Rebels for Ole Miss football and Ole Miss men’s basketball. At the age of 30, he was one of just a few play-by-play announcers to do all three major sports in the Southeastern Conference. Throughout the past 35 years, Kellum has been honored with numerous broadcasting awards including National Sports Media Association Mississippi Sportscaster of the Year nine times and the 2006 Lindsey Nelson Outstanding Sportscaster Award from the All-American Football Association among several others. He currently hosts RebTalk and is the Master of Ceremonies for Rebel Road Trips and other athletic events.
Kellum has also been involved in the Ole Miss School of Journalism and New Media as an adjunct professor, teaching broadcast sales and sports broadcasting as well as helping with the Student Media Center when it first began.
Kellum has two daughters, Stefanie and Staci, and a granddaughter, Evelyn Louise. Another granddaughter is due to arrive in August. Kellum was recently commissioned as a deacon at Pinelake Church in Oxford, and he and Mary serve on the baptismal committee.
“It is an overwhelming honor to be included in the University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame,” said Kellum. “My first association with Ole Miss was living as a child in married student housing. Now, some 60 plus years later, I still spend my life on the Ole Miss campus and around the country living my dream as the Voice of the Rebels. God has blessed me with a wonderful family, a fulfilling career and an association with a university that is dear to my heart.”
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John Maxwell lives in Jackson but was raised on a cotton farm two miles outside of Pickens. He graduated from Ole Miss with a master’s degree in theatre in 1968. In 1981 he began touring his one-man play, “Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write?” based on the life of Noble Laureate William Faulkner, throughout Mississippi. He has since toured the production to most of the continental United States and 10 foreign countries. Included in this touring was a presentation at the Smithsonian in its Portraits in Motion series, the Bottom Line in New York, the Alliance Regional Theatre in Atlanta and the Empty Space Regional Theatre in Seattle. Perhaps the most prestigious among his presentations was a partial production as a part of the Cultural Olympiad in Atlanta in 1996. Included in that audience were nine Nobel Laureates as well as President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn. He has presented the show at least 1,500 times worldwide.
He has written and produced several monologues and plays based on characters and stories of the Bible. Several of these have toured much of the Southeast. He has won numerous fellowships in playwriting from the Mississippi Arts Council as well as a fellowship in playwriting from the Tennessee Williams Writing Conference in Sewanee, Tennessee. He has served as the artistic director for New Stage Theatre in Jackson and was the recipient of the 2014 Governor’s Award for Art Excellence. He says his greatest achievement is that of his son, Townes and two grandsons, Evans and John Douglas, who live in Austin, Texas, with wife and mom Katie.
“Graduating with a master’s degree in theatre from Ole Miss gave me the opportunity to make a living doing what I love to do,” said Maxwell. “I owe Ole Miss a debt impossible to repay.”
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Suzan Brown Thames’ volunteer career with the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) began in the early 1980s where she was the leader of the successful fundraising campaign for the state’s first standalone pediatric cancer clinic. She established the first support group and fundraising entity, Friends of Children’s Hospital, and was its inaugural president and its chair for 20 years. She chaired the successful capital campaign to build Batson Hospital for Children which opened its doors in 1997. Thames served on the UMMC Capital Campaign Committee for the $101 Million Kathy and Joe Sanderson Mississippi Children’s Hospital, which was opened in 2020.
Thames’ efforts at UMMC led friends and family to endow the Suzan Brown Thames Chair in Pediatrics, the first of its kind, with $2.1 million in contributions.
Thames currently serves as chairman of the Advisory Board of the MIND Center (Memory Impairment and Neurodegenerative Dementia) at UMMC, which has raised over $38 million in community and private donor support.
For 34 years, she enjoyed a successful, professional career as a speech pathologist and audiologist working with patients at the Jackson Ear Nose and Throat Clinic.
From Jackson, Thames earned a master’s degree in speech pathology and audiology from Tulane University and received a fellowship from the University of Wisconsin in behavioral disabilities.
Thames has served on several organizational boards for the university, including the University of Mississippi Foundation, Ole Miss Women’s Council and the executive committee of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. She was the 2015 recipient of the Ole Miss Alumni Service Award. Thames was chosen as Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year by the National Philanthropy Association in 2011.
She is active with her husband Tommy in their church Northminster Baptist and has three daughters and six grandchildren.
“Ole Miss and our Medical Center have enriched my life in every dimension by providing meaningful purpose, exceptional opportunities for learning and magnificent relationships beginning as a student and continuing today as a volunteer,” said Thames. “I am genuinely grateful for this honor and the lifelong encouragement that the Ole Miss family has instilled in me.”
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William G. Yates is the CEO and president of The Yates Companies Inc. The Yates Companies Inc. is a nationally recognized construction firm that has been consistently listed in the Engineering News Record’s top 50 contractors in the U.S. Under his leadership, Yates has grown to more than 20 offices in over a dozen states from California to Maine.
At Ole Miss, he was active in Sigma Chi Fraternity and obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration graduating summa cum laude. He was a Hearin-Hess scholar and a Taylor Medalist. Yates also earned a master’s degree in construction management from Arizona State University and is a CPA.
Yates is a member of the boards of directors of the New Orleans Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Trustmark National Bank and the Mississippi Economic Council. His former directorships include the University of Mississippi Alumni Association, the Millsaps College Board of Trustees, the University of Mississippi Foundation, former chair of Mississippi Associated Builders and Contractors and former chair of the United Way of South Mississippi. He was also a member of the Governor’s Commission for Economic Recovery during the COVID-19 response.
In 2024, Yates was named one of Mississippi’s Top 50 Most Influential Leaders. In addition to this and others, Yates was recognized with a Hope Award, a United Way of South Mississippi’s President Award and was inducted into the Roland Weeks Hall of Fame Outstanding Community Leaders Class of 2010.
Yates has two children, Abby (BAccy 23, MADA 24) and Gully, who is currently a junior at Ole Miss.
“Ole Miss has had a very positive impact on my life, and I am thankful for the opportunities it has afforded me,” said Yates. “It is an honor to be recognized and especially with such a distinguished group.”
Alumni Service Award
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Jon C. Turner is a retired partner from the Jackson office of BKD/FORVIS, where his public accounting experience with several firms spanned over 40 years and multiple industries. He is a member of the Mississippi Society of CPAs and was selected as the winner of the 2013 MSCPA Public Service Award for his community and statewide civic involvement.
Turner, a Belzoni native, began his career with the international accounting firm of Peat Marwick Mitchell, now KPMG, in Jackson. He then joined a local firm that later became Smith, Turner & Reeves, which grew into one of the three largest CPA firms in Mississippi. After serving over 20 years as the managing partner of that firm, Turner guided the 2008 merger of his firm and two other Mississippi CPA firms with BKD, garnering him the title “father of BKD Mississippi.”
Turner is a past president of the Ole Miss Alumni Association and has served multiple terms on its executive committee and on the boards of the University of Mississippi Foundation and the UM Athletics Committee. Turner served as a co-chair of the Ole Miss First Campaign and on the steering committee for the campaign to construct the Inn at Ole Miss. He served three terms as an appointed member of the Inter-Alumni Council for Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning.
Turner was a co-founder and president of the Rebel Club of Jackson that grew into the school’s largest booster club and later served as president of the Central Mississippi Alumni Club.
Turner has been active as an advisor to Kappa Alpha Order and was awarded its highest honor, the “Knight Commander’s Accolade” by the group’s national organization and honored as “Alumnus of the Year” by the active chapter, who later named the award for him. At KA’s 150-year celebration in 2015, he received the Distinguished Service Award, recognized as being the most impactful alumnus in the history of the Ole Miss chapter. Turner and his wife, the former Pam Mills, reside in Jackson. They have two daughters, who are also Ole Miss grads, and six grandchildren.
“Ole Miss truly is a family and the campus and Oxford have remained a hub for our extended family through the years,” said Turner. “Ole Miss is very much a part of who I am and is a large piece of our family fabric. And as the Alumni Association is the glue for that fabric, I am deeply honored to receive its award for serving the university.”
Outstanding Young Alumni Award
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Mallory McCormack graduated from the University of Mississippi with a master’s degree in business administration in 2015. Upon graduation, she continued her career in government contracting, focusing on program management. She is currently a program manager for Saab, Inc.
McCormack is a 24-year childhood cancer survivor and has worked with organizations such as Livestrong, the American Cancer Society and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to raise funds and lobby on behalf of treatments for cancer research funding. She is also on the board of directors and has served as president for Christmas Charities Year Round, a local charity in Huntsville, Alabama, that provides free services and goods for the area’s most economically challenged citizens. She is also a member of Women in Defense, a national organization that supports the advancement and recognition of women in all aspects of national security.
McCormack served on the Ole Miss Alumni Association Board of Directors from 2019 to 2021 and has been president of the Rocket City Rebel Club since 2015. She and her husband Cody are charter members of eMpower, a component of Vaught Society, which is tailored specifically to Ole Miss women’s athletic programs.
A Mississippi native, McCormack grew up in north Alabama and currently resides in Huntsville with her husband Cody and their dogs, Annie and Magnolia.
“Ole Miss is so much more than the degree I received; it is a special place with incredible people that have helped shape who I am today and continue to challenge me to think bigger and never stop learning,” McCormack said. “Being awarded the 2024 Outstanding Young Alumni Award means more than words can say. I am honored to be recognized among other distinguished alumni and friends of the University of Mississippi.”