Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Alumni Association will honor famed Georgia cartoonist Jack Davis, retired UGA professor Tom Dyer and retired UGA vice president Hank Huckaby at the association’s annual awards luncheon on April 13 at noon at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel. The association will also recognize Mary Virginia Terry, a major UGA financial benefactor, and the McWhorter family, whose affiliation with the university spans more than a century.
Davis, one of America’s leading illustrators, will receive the 70th annual Alumni Merit Award, which recognizes UGA alumni for lifetime loyalty and support of the Alumni Association as well as professional leadership.
Dyer, retired professor of history and higher education, and Huckaby, former senior vice president for finance and administration, will receive the Faculty Service Award, which is given to faculty or staff members for distinguished service to the university.
Terry, who with her late husband, Herman, are namesakes of UGA’s Terry College of Business, will receive the Friend of UGA Award, given to a non-graduate whose professional and public service benefits the university.
The McWhorter family is being honored as Family of the Year in recognition of many years of outstanding loyalty and service to their community, the university and the Alumni Association.
The alumni association has presented the Alumni Merit Award since 1937 and the Faculty Service Award since 1969. The Friend of UGA Award was started in 2002. The association is reviving the Family of the Year award, which was started in 1966 but has not been presented for a number of years.
Davis, an Atlanta native, won early recognition as one of the original artists for Mad magazine and his work has appeared in Time (36 cover illustrations), Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and Reader’s Digest. He has drawn illustrations for book covers and record albums, designed artwork for movies and television and created advertisements for leading corporations.
He is best known at UGA for his signature cartoons depicting Bulldog athletic figures, which he has drawn since creating the original “Junkyard Dawg” in 1978. He studied at UGA under noted art professor Lamar Dodd and the School of Art, which is named for Dodd, has created a visiting professorship and an annual lecture series in Davis’ honor. Davis has been inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame and received the National Cartoonist Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dyer, who held the title of University Professor, joined UGA’s faculty in 1975 and served in a number of administrative positions including vice president for instruction, senior associate vice president for academic affairs, associate vice president for services and interim senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. He was director of the Institute of Higher Education from 2003 until he retired last December.
An authority on southern history and the history of higher education, Dyer was chairman of UGA’s Bicentennial celebration. He is author of three books, including the standard scholarly history of the University of Georgia, and numerous book chapters, reviews and articles. His 1999 book Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta, was chosen an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year by Choice magazine, won several other awards and was entered in competition for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.
A former editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly and a past board member of the Georgia Humanities Council, Dyer served on the national board of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and helped create the Governor’s Teaching Fellows Program in Georgia. He has received the Governor’s Award in the Humanities and UGA’s Distinguished Public Service Medallion.
Huckaby served as senior vice president for finance and administration from 2000 until his retirement last June. Previously he was director of the university’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government for three years. Before joining the university, he worked in state government for 22 years and was the state’s top budgeting and finance official.
As vice president, Huckaby instituted technological advances to improve efficiency in campus administrative operations. He oversaw implementation of the university’s Campus Master Plan, including opening of the Student Learning Center and renovation of many older facilities. He worked with UGA’s Real Estate Foundation to construct several new buildings and acquire property to extend campus borders.
Before joining UGA, Huckaby was director of the state Office of Planning and Budget, the highest financial position in state government. He also served as executive director of the Georgia Housing and Finance Authority and was commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
Mary Virginia and Herman Terry have a long record of support of UGA and its business school, from which Herman received a degree in 1939. In 1990, the couple gave the business school $6 million, at the time the largest cash gift in university history. That gift, along with subsequent gifts, has funded faculty chairs, scholarships, summer research support and facility upgrades to the Terry College’s Executive Education Center in Atlanta.
The couple also made gifts to support other faculty chairs and the university’s general scholarship fund. Terry also has endowed a faculty chair in UGA’s College of Pharmacy in honor of her husband’s father, who was a pharmacist, and she gave the university $300,000 to support research and treatment of asthma and other respiratory illnesses, which were contributing factors in Herman Terry’s death in 1998.
Terry has long been a major supporter of philanthropic, educational and cultural causes in Jacksonville, Fla. She has been a trustee of Jacksonville University and served on the boards of the Wolfson Children’s Hospital, the Children’s Home Society, the Salvation Army, the Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless and the Jacksonville Symphony. In 2002, she received the Blue Key Service Award from the UGA chapter of Blue Key National Honor Society.
The McWhorter family, which will be honored as Family of the Year, traces its roots to Hugh McWhorter, who came to Georgia in 1803 and settled in Oglethorpe County. He was a descendent of another Hugh McWhorter who immigrated from Ireland to Delaware.
Members of the family have been attending UGA since the 19th century and according to UGA historian Nash Boney, more than 225 family members have passed through the university. Many became leaders in government, law, business, education and public service in Georgia and in other states and several have held faculty positions at UGA.
At least nine members of the family were star athletes at UGA, according to Dan Magill, another UGA historian. Among them is Bob McWhorter, a 1914 graduate considered by some to be Georgia’s greatest football player and the first UGA athlete to be named an All American.
Other notable family members include Boyd McWhorter, a 1949 graduate who became dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and served as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference from 1971-86; former State Sen. Hamilton McWhorter of Oglethorpe County; and his son Hamilton “Hamp” McWhorter Jr., long-time secretary of the Georgia Senate. Hamilton McWhorter Sr. was also the grandfather of Hamilton Jordan, a 1967 graduate who was President Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff.
For more information on the UGA Alumni Association, see http://www.alumni.uga.edu/alumni/.
