The 2010 Lifetime Achievement Awards honored four impressive Auburn alumni Saturday night at the Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center. Recipients of these awards have extensive achievements in their professional careers, human services or significant service to Auburn University.
Robert Johns, J. Smith Lanier II, Gerald Smith and Kathryn Thornton received this year's awards. Johns was an Auburn lineman and member of the class of 1957. He founded The Hampshire Management Group, Inc., was an inductee of the International Maritime Hall of Fame and was the recipient of Auburn's Walter Gilbert Award in 2006 for former athletes with great achievements after graduation.
Lanier retired as chairman of J. Smith Lanier and Co., one of the largest independent insurance brokerage firms in the nation. He was the first dean's advisory board chair for the Auburn College of Human Sciences, and he and his wife Betty are recipients of the College of Human Sciences' International Quality of Life Award.
Lanier said he was humbled and honored to receive the award.
"I was thrilled," Lanier said. "It was a really exciting night for me, to be able to receive such a prestigious award." Lanier said he credits much of his successtohistimeatAuburn.
"I was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity, and I got thrown in with a great class," Lanier said. "I was fortunate enough to study with a great group of students."
Smith, an Albertville native, graduated in 1961. He helped design, build and fly the solid-rocket motor for NASA after the "Challenger" accident in 1986. He was also the deputy director of NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center, the federal government's largest rocket-engine testing facility.
Montgomery native and member of the class of 1974, Thornton became a NASA astronaut in 1985. She flew on the "Discovery," the "Columbia" and twice on the "Endeavour." Thornton works as the associate dean for graduate programs and engineering at the University of Virginia.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards were first presented in 2001. Each year, recipients are nominated and approved by a 14-member committee, said Tanja Matthews, alumni programs coordinator.
"Our recipients have made a significant impact on their industry or community," Matthews said.
The ceremony is a black tie dinner with speakers such as Auburn University President Jay Gogue, as well as the executive director of the Alumni Association, Matthews said.
"After the dinner, we have the speakers, and then there is an eight minute video for each recipient before they receive their award," Matthews said. "The video gives a synopsis of the recipients' lives. This year we had everything from NASA launches to how our recipients were as children on the videos."
Matthews also said the annual ceremony acts as a social event for thosethatattend.
"Some people know each other, others don't," Matthews said. "But, either way, people that attend the awards run in the same circles. They get excited to see people they haven't seen in a long time."
Lanier said that things were much different at Auburn when he was a student in the late 1940s.
"When I started at Auburn, we were in the middle of World War II, so there were a lot more girls than boys," Lanier said. "When the veterans started coming back, there was a dynamic change at the University, but ( Jordan-Hare) stadium could still only hold about 5,000 students."
Lanier said he loves Auburn even more now than he did as a student.
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