After retiring after a 60-year stint at William Carey University – including 15 years as university president – Tommy King will be honored with a retirement reception at the building that was named after and dedicated to him last year.
The come-and-go event, which the public is invited to attend, will be held from 4:30-6 p.m. July 28 on the first floor of the King Student Center on the WCU Hattiesburg campus. Special gifts presented to King during a private dinner earlier this week will be on the display – along with their backstories – will be on display at the reception.
In addition, a slideshow will highlight Kings’s decades of service to the university.
“We expect a very big crowd, and a lot of family people will be there, as well as people from the public and boards and organizations, and churches that he’s worked with through the years,” said Barbara, Hamilton, executive assistant to the president. “So that’s kind of a farewell from a lot of people who have a lot of respect for him, and great appreciation for what he’s done through difficult times at Carey.”
All in all, including his stint as president, King has spent six decades on the Carey campus. That includes as a campus leader while a student, as a Carey trustee, adjunct professor, department chair and executive vice president.
One of King’s first major challenges as president came in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed the university’s first Gulf Coast campus. After that, he chose the location and developed the construction of the new Tradition campus on the Gulf Coast.
During that time, the university applied to open the WCU College of Osteopathic Medicine, which admitted its first class in 2010 at the Hattiesburg campus.
Another challenge came in January 2017, when an EF-3 tornado tore through Hattiesburg and Petal and wreaked havoc on the Hattiesburg campus, destroying six buildings and leaving only one untouched. One of the destroyed buildings was the original Tatum Court, for which King led the rebuilding effort and cut the ribbon on the restored Tatum Court in July 2019.
King was instrumental in establishing the School of Pharmacy at the Tradition campus, a physical therapy doctoral program in Hattiesburg, and a new nursing school in Baton Rouge. He also led the way to the construction of a new 67,000-square-foot facility for the College of Health Sciences – the largest complex WCU has ever built. The most recent ribbon-cutting was for the King Student Center, named in honor of King and his wife, Sandra.
Also During King’s tenure, the university saw unprecedented growth in enrollment, with the number of students more than doubling from 2,500 to more than 5,200. During the same time, the number of residential students in Hattiesburg has increased four-fold and six new dorms have been opened.
“For over 60 years, Dr. Tommy King has had an association with William Carey University,” Hamilton said. “He was a student there over 60 years ago, has worked there for 23 years, and became the first graduate of his alma mater to be president of Carey.
“For 15 years, he served in a selfless, humble and visionary manner, and we so appreciate all of his work. Now, we hope he has a happy, relaxing time in retirement, and doing what he wants to with the wonderful members of his family. So the Carey family has great appreciation for all of his leadership, and we look forward to celebrating with him (this) week.”
As far as plans for retirement, King hasn’t quite worked that out yet.
“For the first month or so, I’ll just kick up my feet and relax and catch up on rest,” King said in an earlier story. “Then I’ll look around some and see.
“I’d like to continue helping the college on a limited basis, if possible. I don’t know how that will work out, but that’s part of the plan.”
