Five Receive Davie Award for Extraordinary Service

Posted on Nov. 21, 2006

Five longtime supporters of UNC are the 2006 recipients of the William Richardson Davie Award.

They are Alan Dickson of Charlotte; Leonard Herring ’48 of North Wilkesboro; Jim Hynes ’62 of Charlotte; Allen Morgan ’65 of Memphis, Tenn.; and U.S. Rep. Melvin Watt ’67 of Charlotte. The award, given by the Board of Trustees, recognizes extraordinary service to the University or to society.

Dickson graduated in 1953 from N.C. State University with a degree in textiles and earned his degree in business administration from Harvard University. One year after he and his brother formed Ruddick Corp. in 1968 as a holding company for their father’s textile company, the brothers acquired the Harris Teeter grocery chain. Dickson joined the John Motley Morehead Foundation board of trustees in 1964 and served as its chair from 1985 to 2006. He is married to a fellow Davie Award recipient, Mary Anne Dickson ’63.

Herring, who received his degree in commerce, was chief executive office of Lowe’s Companies from 1978 until his retirement in 1997. Herring has been a member of the Board of Visitors and established a scholarship to benefit UNC students from Greene and Wilkes counties.

Hynes graduated with an English degree. After four years in the U.S. Navy, he went on to work at his father’s sales and marketing firm, Hynes Inc., where he became the controlling stockholder in 1971 and its chair from 1986 to 2000. Hynes has established three endowments at the University: the Cameron Morrison College Fellows Fund, to benefit students from Mecklenburg and Richmond counties; a memorial endowment named for his daughter, Suzanne, in the College of Arts and Sciences to benefit faculty; and an endowment for students traveling abroad.

Morgan, who graduated with a degree in history, founded the investment firm Morgan Keegan & Co. Morgan has served on UNC’s Foundation Board, the UNC Investment Fund Board, and the Carolina First Campaign Steering Committee as co-chair of its Tennessee committee. He also created the Morgan Writer-in-Residence Program, which has brought noted writers such as Joan Didion, Annie Dillard and John Grisham to the University for readings, seminars and public lectures.

As one of the few black students then at the University, Watt graduated with a degree in business administration before going on to Yale University, where he earned a degree in law. After establishing a career as a civil rights attorney, Watt served in the state Senate, where he earned the nickname “the conscience of the state.” In Congress, he became chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The Davie Award, established by the UNC trustees in 1984, is named for the Revolutionary War hero considered the University’s founder.

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