Harbert Magazine Fall 2022

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where he developed USAA’s military public relations unit. He spent a third career at Air Force Village (a retirement community for military officers) where he was executive officer to the CEO. Kerry married his high school sweet- heart, Kathleen June O’Connell, (’67, liberal arts), and they have three sons and seven grandchildren. Bill Harper (’67, accounting, management)  worked 40 years for the Alabama Farm Bureau, now called Alfa. He was the senior vice president of Alfa Life Insurance Corp. and Alfa Financial Corp. for his last 21 years there. He has been retired for 14 years and has enjoyed volunteering for organizations that help low-income and homeless people in central Alabama.   He majored in accounting and manage- ment at Auburn, which provided him with a great background to understand how to run all aspects of a business. He was promoted to management after being with the insur- ance company for only nine months. He was promoted to senior management during his 12 th year with the company. 1970s Leon Bankston (’70, business adminis- tration, ’75, MBA)  is “retired now, playing tennis and golf and taking care of a rental building I own.” He got into the computer business in 1972 and moved on to buy his own copier and computer company in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1982. That busi- ness grew from seven full-time employees to more than 60 throughout Mississippi. He sold it to Pitney Bowes in 2003. Bankston bought an RV company in 2004 and built it into a midsize RV dealership on I-10 in Biloxi. He sold it to Camping World in 2018. Roger Bartlett (’78, human resources management)  spent 39 years in the human resources field plus five more with an employee-benefits brokerage and said he has decided it is time “to focus more on

1950s Jim Perdue (’56, business administration) retired in 2004 from Lafarge Corporation after 42 years in the Portland cement indus- try. He points out that Portland Cement becomes concrete once properly mixed and took a jab at journalists who misuse the terminology: “It should be ‘concrete’ sidewalks, not ‘cement’ sidewalks!” He was primarily involved in sales and marketing management during his career. He and his wife, Anna Turner, (’61, liberal arts), have been married 59 years. He has a daughter, Michelle, ’93, and a son, Scott, as well as granddaughters, Morgan and Kasey. 1960s Kerry Green (’68, business administration) retired from the Air Force as a full colo- nel where he served as a personnel offi- cer, weapons system officer flying F-4s, commander of a basic military training squadron and commander of a person- nel resources group. In addition, he had duty as an executive officer/military assis- tant to seven general officers in HQ USAF, The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Blue-Ribbon Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. He followed that Air Force service with a second career at the U.S. Air Force Academy,

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48 Harbert Business, Fall 2022

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