John E. Mays Retires From Tusculum College

A Mays Suite

The naming of the second floor development offices in McCormick Hall as the "Mays Office Suite" was announced at a dinner honoring John E. Mays. From left to right are Nancy Mays, Brenda Knott, Dr. Robert E. Knott, Mays, Thomas J. Garland and Mark Stokes.

"When we began planning this dinner last spring, I had no idea that I would be coming over the mountain to attend it," Bob Knott told the roomful of guests who had assembled to wish John Mays well in his retirement. Sometime after Mays announced his impending retirement, Knott himself announced that he would be joining Mars Hill College as executive vice-president and dean.

"Someone asked Brenda [Knott] why I decided to accept the Mars Hill offer,” Knott continued, “and her answer was, ‘Bob and John are like two old mules that have been plowing together for years. One day the farmer takes one of them away, and the other one looks around and has no idea what to do.'

"There is something to that," Knott concluded. "There is no way to overstate what John has meant to me personally as well as to the three institutions we have served together."

On this night, Knott was able to surprise his old friend and recognize his work in a tangible way—namely a bronze plaque recognizing Mays' contributions by naming the offices in which he had worked on the second floor of McCormick Hall as the John E. Mays Office Suite.

"I had no idea anyone but me knew how to order plaques," Mays said, in response to the unveiling. Mays then expressed his gratitude to Knott and the Board of Trustees for the recognition and to his colleagues over the years for their good work on behalf of the College.

A Settled Life

At a reception honoring Mays are pictured Susie Jones, office manager for external relations; Tom Sanders, director of communications; Mays; Vickie Martha, administrative assistant for external relations; and Sean Bride, director of alumni affairs and annual giving. Jones is presenting Mays with a "flying pig" birdhouse for his new home in Blairsville, Georgia.

Thirty-two years ago, John Mays was happily employed in the retail jewelry business in Jonesborough, Arkansas. His father-in-law, who owned the store, was nearing retirement and Mays had joined the enterprise a few years earlier and was becoming comfortable in the establishment. A graduate of Southwestern (now Rhodes) College, where he had met his wife, Nancy, Mays was well on his way to becoming a successful young businessman.

It was a settled life. Mays kept busy at the store and was active in men’s work in the local Presbyterian church on weekends and evenings, serving as an elder and as president of the Men of the Church of East Arkansas Presbytery and then the Synod of Arkansas. After moving around West Tennessee with his school-teacher parents as a child, and serving active duty in the U.S. Navy for four years, folks may have thought he was ready to be in one place for a while.

That might have been the end of the story, but, in 1968, at Arkansas College, the nearby Presbyterian liberal arts college, fate was cooking up a new career. The college had just undergone an evaluation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and had been told it needed administrative help. “The president of the college was trying to do too much," Mays says, "so a friend I had known in church work (the late Reverend Bill Clark, who later became a trustee of Tusculum College) put my name in the hopper to work in admissions and development.

"We'll know for sure you're gone when....." The flying pig cake.

The experience at Arkansas (now Lyon) College launched an exemplary career in development work for four small colleges in the South. At Arkansas, a graph representing giving during Mays' ten-year stay sweeps up like the Rockies from the plains. As a result of the foundation he laid, the college now has an endowment of almost $50 million. At his next career stop, Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Mays strengthened relationships between the university and its corporate and foundation supporters—with like results. After six years at Oglethorpe, his friend Bob Knott, whom he had met at Arkansas College, served as a catalyst for Mays to join the team at Catawba College. There, the board of trustees became the primary source of support. In 1989, he received the Trustees Award from Catawba College in recognition of his direction of a $28 million capital campaign. Mays came to Tusculum College with Knott in July 1989.

Coming Over the Mountain
At Tusculum, Mays has had similar success. He has led two capital campaigns that have yielded over $34 milllion for the College. While Knott has provided the intellectual solid ground for the renaissance of Tusculum College over the last ten years, Mays has tirelessly brought the message of the College’s new direction to friends around the country, offering them the opportunity to participate.

:The plaque now located on the second floor of McCormick Hall reads: The Mays Office Suite is named in honor of John E. Mays, outstanding and loyal college administrator, dedicated Presbyterian churchman, steadfast friend and colleague who, as senior vice-president for external relations, 1889-1999, led the College to unprecedented heights in fund-raising through two capital campaigns totaling over $30 million. His legacy is great. August 21, 1999."

Mays says he is particularly pleased with the direction of Tusculum College with its emphasis on Christian character, citizenship and service to community. "I am convinced that Christian faculty have daily opportunities to be positive influences on the lives of students from different ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds," he says. "Many of these opportunities are generally not available through the ministry of the traditional church."

The Mays have three grown children: Bill is with Delta Air Lines in Atlanta, Georgia, Evelyn is a nurse in Richmond, Virginia, and David is a development officer at the University of Wyoming. Their children have blessed them with four grandchildren, the youngest of whom was born this summer in Wyoming. Bill represented the family at the dinner recognizing his father and offered up insights on some of the roots of his father’s success.

In the coming years, John and Nancy plan to relax after after a lifetime's journey through four different locales across the South. The Mays have built a home in Blairsville, Georgia, right off a decent lake for some bass fishing, and are buying a pontoon boat. It looks as if John Mays is ready to try that settled life he abandoned thirty-two years ago when Arkansas College called.