A William Carey University School of Business professor has retired after 49 years of service.
At the start of Jimmy McCay’s academic career in 1971, tuition for a semester was $300, the athletic department had two sports and the business department had three faculty members.
Being raised as a preacher’s son, McCay held on to the saying from his father, “You are the only Bible that some people read.”
He kept that saying close to his heart throughout his career, and it formed a significant part of his personality.
“I was a preacher’s kid,” said McCay. “Preacher’s kids in the Methodist church move every three, four or five years. I never went to school and finished a grade at that school. I was the third child of four, and I was kind of bouncing around.”
After completing high school, McCay went to Millsaps College, where he studied business. He made his way to Hattiesburg to earn his master’s degree in business from the University of Southern Mississippi.
“I was good at math and things like that,” he said. “When I went to Millsaps, back in those days, the business department was not a prominent department. The prominent department was the pre-med department, but I enjoyed accounting and business, and that’s how I got into that. I never thought about teaching, really. I was going to own my own business or something like that.”
In a strange turn of events, less than a week before the start of the fall semester in 1971, the instructor slated to teach some of William Carey’s business courses abruptly quit.
“The guy that was teaching there quit like a day or week before classes started,” said McCay. “They had heard that I had just finished school and lived in Hattiesburg, so Dr. Joseph Ernest called me and talked to me on a Friday … and, that afternoon, he offered me the job. He gave me five books for preparation and said ‘you start Monday at 8 o’clock.’ There was very little preparation or anything.”
Until McCay received the job offer, the idea of teaching had never been in his mind.
“I figured they were scraping the barrel,” said McCay. “I fit the qualifications. They didn’t know me, but they knew my father, who was the head of the Methodist church for the Hattiesburg district. You never know what the Lord is going to direct you to, but being a Methodist and going to a Baptist school to teach … I felt like I was going to the mission field.”
The quick turnaround to learn course materials was a challenge, but McCay credited his public speaking abilities to his time as a preacher’s son.
“I was 24 years old teaching students that were 21,” he said. “Being a preacher’s kid, it never bothered me to stand up and talk. I think I was above average on that. I studied more in that one year than I studied in four years at Millsaps. I worried about it, but my immediate supervisor knew it wasn’t easy on me … and he stuck with me. He encouraged me, and the administration encouraged me. I got better as I went.”
McCay fell in love with his job as well as the William Carey culture.
“I kind of fell in love with it,” said McCay. “The Carey family was there. You could walk and visit with people from all different walks of life. They were just good people and welcoming people.”
McCay said the “Bootstrap Program,” an education program for U.S. Army soldiers and veterans in the 1970s, helped him develop his teaching style.
“A lot of these guys were straight from Vietnam, where they had been in the field. They were master sergeants, lieutenants, and we had a lieutenant colonel. Most of them were Army, but we had some Air Force and Navy. They had to get their degrees to stay in the military. To get a promotion or anything, you had to have a degree.”
Those students were older than McCay, with some in their mid-30s and mid-40s.
“I was talking about marketing, and they had left Vietnam where people were shooting at people,” he said. “It was a different world.”
The memory of those students is one McCay looks back fondly upon, and it helped develop some perspective toward his students. After the program phased out, McCay and other William Carey professors began to teach classes at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center.
He also – unwittingly – volunteered to teach classes at what would become the foundation of the university’s Gulf Coast presence.
“William Carey bought the Gulf Coast Military Academy after they went out of business,” he said. “They asked if we could go down and teach, so we drove down and back to the Hattiesburg campus. They needed somebody from the School of Business. We were standing in a line, and they asked for a volunteer. I looked around, and I found out everybody else took a step backward. That’s how I taught on that campus for two years.”
McCay’s career has been filled with love for his job and his students, and he said he loved teaching under different circumstances. He said he also loved cheering on the Crusaders, the university’s various athletic teams.
According to fellow professor Laurie Glaze, McCay’s love for his students was important to his success as a professor.
“He loved students,” she said. “He was a great student advocate, a great adviser … he was very entertaining, and he had a lot of great stories to tell from his own experience. He was a lot of fun to work with and such a happy person. He most definitely left a mark on William Carey.”
Like Glaze, Dr. Cheryl Dale, dean of the School of Business, admired McCay and credits his ability to connect with students as his greatest asset.
“He is definitely one of a kind,” she said. “We will miss his sense of humor. He was always dependable. McCay made a connection with everybody he met.”
McCay said his proudest achievement is the number of lives he’s touched.
“The proudest moments are when somebody succeeds, and they come back … and they tell you that you touched their lives,” he said. “That means more to me than anything.”
