Sample Excerpts from Video Scripts/Bios: Junior Achievement/Atlanta Business Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony (Bios appeared in Atlanta Business Chronicle)

 

Bernard Marcus (CEO, Home Depot)

 

Bernard Marcus remembers the day in 1978, when he opened his first Home Depot. In Atlanta. His three children stood at the store exits, handing out a total of 700 one dollar bills to customers as “thank you’s” for shopping at his store. Thinking the money would be gone by noon, they still had plenty left when late afternoon rolled around.

 

As he recalled, “By 5:00, my kids were running around in the parking lot, giving people money to come into the store.”

 

Such were the humble beginnings of one of the most legendary success stories in Atlanta history , not to mention modern American business. Indeed, one analyst commented that, “Business schools will be doing case studies of Home Depot to study how to build a perfect company.”

 

But, Bernard Marcus knows that success is a team effort, and his commitment to empowering his employees, customers, or those in his community shines through brightly. Whether it’s in his work with the Marcus Center for the mentally impaired, or with his own Home Depot family, he nurtures the potential he sees around him.

 

In the work arena, by making his firm employee-owned, he’s built an empire on the basic premise of free enterprise: give an employee a stake in the outcome, and they’ll be motivated to do a better job.

 

So, beyond just providing higher than average wages and stock options, Marcus encourages the development of people.

 

Bernard Marcus, a true Atlanta champion!

 

 

Margaret Mitchell (Author, Gone With the Wind)

 

Benjamin Mays, legendary former president of Morehouse College, once said of Margaret Mitchell: “She wore fame as a loose garment and that can be said of only a few people who achieve fame. She is perhaps the greatest author the South has produced and one of the world’s great authors.” And all this praise for a woman who wrote just one book. But, what a book it was.

 

Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta on November 8, 1900. Her father, Eugene Mitchell, was an attorney, her mother, Maybelle an activist in the women’s suffrage movement. Not surprisingly, Margaret or Peggy as she was known most of her life was encouraged at an early age to be more than just a housewife. She and her brother Stephens grew up in the Jackson hill section of Atlanta before moving to more prestigious Peachtree Street. Young Peggy avidly pursued a fascination with the Civil War, soaking up all there was to know about it. Except, apparently that the South had lost. This unpleasant news was broken to her by a field hand on a relative’s farm one summer.

 

She soon turned to writing, a passion she pursued through her years at Washington Seminary, a private girls school close to Atlanta. Her talents were encouraged both here and at Smith College, which she entered at age 18. Here, she excelled at English composition and indeed was declared a “youthful genius” by her professor. At night, she would regale standing-room-only crowds of her fellow residents who’d gather just to hear her talk on a wide variety of topics, including almost always, her favorite – The Civil War. As one classmate recalled, “She felt about Robert E. Lee pretty much as if he was the current film idol.”

 

In 1925, she married John Marsh, and for the rest of her life, the two shared a strong and deeply affectionate partnership. Marsh shared her love of history and played a key role in the conception of Gone With The Wind.

 

In 1935, Macmillan editor Harold Latham arrived in Atlanta on the hunt for promising manuscripts. A few of Mitchell’s newspaper colleagues recruited her to aid him in his search. Though he’d heard she was writing a book, she denied it, since, incredibly, she had no desire to have her book published. Latham was captivated by this 4’ 11” dynamo, her quick wit, flirtatious charm, and exceptional story-telling ability. Peggy cultivated her paradoxical image of southern belle/unrepentant wild child, or as she put it, “one of the short-haired, short-skirted hard-boiled young women who preachers said would go to hell or be hanged before they were 30.”

 

The night of his departure, angered by a friend’s remarks doubting her ability to write a successful novel, Peggy appeared at Latham’s hotel with some 60 manila envelopes containing her manuscript. On the train home, he was initially discouraged by, physically, “the worst-looking manuscript he had ever been given in his long career in publishing.” However, before long, just as the many millions who followed would be, he was entranced.

 

Macmillan purchased the book and over the next year, Mitchell rewrote and re-checked her facts. The book was a huge success before it hit the bookstores in 1936 and quickly captured the imagination of the country in a word-of-mouth tidal wave. Two weeks into publication in 1936, the book went into its sixth printing for a total of 140,000 copies. At the one-month mark - 226,000. Three months – 526,000. In December 1936, six months after publication, Gone With the Wind had sold one million copies. At this point, as John Marsh, in his memoirs, described his wife, the ever-reluctant celebrity, “Margaret Mitchell left for a vacation trip to Florida to catch her breath and try to figure out what kind of fix she had gotten herself into.” In 1937, Margaret Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

 

Dr. Betty Siegel (President, Kennesaw State University)

 

Betty Siegel remembers going back to her first alma mater - little Cumberland College in Kentucky - to visit the hospital bedside of her favorite professor. She leaned over the bad and said, “I’ve come back to tell you I’m a teacher, and all because of you.” His reply? “Did I teach you anything at all, Betty Faye?” Few people, however, would take issue with her decision - least of all Betty.

 

Betty Faye Lentz grew up as a coal miner’s daughter in Cumberland, Kentucky. Though only a small town of 4,000, Cumberland boasted a worldly mix of Middle European, Russian and Polish immigrants. Not to mention a broad spectrum of faiths: Catholicism, Judaism, Greek Orthodoxy and of course, Baptist. This melting pot experience with its richness and variety would guide her vision of higher education in later years.

 

In 1981, all these experiences converged when Betty Siegel was tapped to lead then Kennesaw State College, becoming the first women to head an institution in the University System of Georgia. Over the past 18 years, she’s brought her unique and powerful mix of qualities to bear: razor-sharp people skills, highly effective administration ability, down-to-earth accessibility and a enormous capacity for compassion.

 

Early on, she instituted her famous “We Oughta” sessions, where the faculty and administration could meet with her to voice concerns, criticisms and support. As one of her deans observed, “She creates a climate that urges people to reach out beyond the limits of the institution.”

 

And she’s known few limits since she’s arrived, neither in her vision for the university or her energy level. The school achieved a major milestone in 1996, earning university accreditation status. And since 1981, she’s taken Kennesaw State from an enrollment of 4,000 to its current level of over 13,000 students and more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs.      

 

During her tenure at Kennesaw State University, her key guiding principles have always included her belief in open, accessible education and the a human being’s need to achieve their potential. Her distaste for autocratic, ivory-tower leadership means that chances are good, you’ll find her out talking to students or enjoying breakfast at her early morning “office.” The Waffle House across from the KSU campus. She’s known as a real, genuine human being, someone who never takes herself too seriously and always makes time for a little fun. 

 

Through it all, Betty Siegel has kept her family front and center in her life. She enjoys a special relationship with husband Joel, an attorney and professor at Dalton College. Joel shares her commitment to lifelong learning, having graduated in his mid-50’s from Georgia State Law School, the oldest student in the history of the institution. And according to Betty, some of her most important teachers have been her two sons, David and Michael. She quips, “Being a psychologist didn’t make me a better mother. But my children made me a better psychologist.”

 

This is Betty Siegel. Pioneer for women in education. Gifted administrator. Passionate champion for human potential.

 

END