6 minute read
Telling the MSU Story
George Verrall enjoys sharing stories from his student days onward. Photos by Megan Bean.
By Carolanne Roberts
Walking the Mississippi State campus with Dr. George Verrall can be pure joy and an education. The longtime Starkville citizen understands it brick by brick. He’ll even tell you when to sidestep a particular portion of sidewalk upturned by a massive root, a sidewalk he remembers was once smooth and straight. To him, each brick represents a story of State’s history, presidents, students and moments.
“Remember” is an oft-used word from this man who arrived here during the 1950s from Gulfport, MS, dropped off by a bus in the middle of the night at a campus he had never seen – one chosen by his father while the son was out of the country. It became a place – a home – where he earned four degrees, taught countless students, headed departments both academic and administrative, met his wife Kay who taught French and even returned from retirement for another go-round.
The memories start from the beginning and flow forward.
“I remember arriving in a world you cannot truly imagine,” Verrall says of the then all-male version of Mississippi State. “Old Main Dormitory, with about 800 students, was the largest male dormitory in the world except for [the U.S. Military Academy at] West Point and the University of Moscow…and those had cafeterias that took up space. Ours was all students.”
His recollections include playing pinochle with buddies while listening to football games through an open window; the Korean War veterans and students on his floor from around the state; the “hitchhike stand” on the edge of campus where guys could find rides to nearby Mississippi State College for Women (now Mississippi University for Women) and mistakenly being given a dorm key which turned out to be a master, opening up such things as supply closets where the first-years could replenish the toilet paper upperclassmen “borrowed” to shred for touchdown confetti at games.
Verrall loves one particular memory from those first days, of a short, older man who approached a small cluster of slightly confused freshmen that included Verrall.
“He said what you always say in Mississippi – ‘Where are you boys from?’” he shares. “So, we told him, and we talked. We had no idea who he was.”
Within moments, the group learned the identity of their friendly new acquaintance: Dr. Benjamin Hilbun, President of Mississippi State University.
So began the student career of the future Professor of Finance and Economics who majored in, surprisingly, mechanical engineering.
Adding finance to earn a second undergraduate degree led to an opportunity for Verrall to teach two sections of statistics – putting him in front of a class for the first time.
It would be a good while before he stepped in front of another. Instead, he went to the U.S. Navy Officer Candidate School, followed by roles as supply officer and associate cryptologic officer aboard the USS Conway. This took him through the Suez Canal to Saudi Arabia, among other places. Given the opportunity to be career Navy, he declined in favor of an engineering job with Mississippi Power Company. Stationed deep in the woods on the Mississippi-Louisiana state line, building high
George Verrall with Dean Sharon Oswald during the Centennial Celebration in 2015, when he was recognized as one of the COB’s Notable Faculty.
Photo by Keats Haupt
tension power lines, he felt the tug of academia. The prospect of being in an intellectual atmosphere, surrounded by students eager to learn, held strong appeal.
Luckily for countless students and Mississippi State itself, George Verrall returned to MSU and never looked back. An MBA and a DBA, both earned at the University, were added to his strong credentials. He counts among favorite courses Labor Economics and Labor Law, a management class called Motion in Time and any course addressing the human aspect of economics.
“I like the logic and the thought of economics,” he explains. “I’ve been called an institutionalist, not a mathematical economist. I like to teach why people do what they do.”
Along the way, he also enjoyed teaching Wage and Salary Administration, Government Regulation of Business, Managerial Economics and Business Policy, among others. Then, more than 10 years in, the road forked with an opportunity he had never eyed: administration. He was named Assistant Dean and later Associate Dean of what was then called the College of Business and Industry.
Verrall, who continued teaching certain classes, says, “I wasn’t stepping away from the students but was stepping toward them even more.”
He served MSU over ensuing years as Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Vice President of Business Affairs. His roles involved a good deal of work on behalf of Mississippi State with the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board, which governs the state’s public universities.
“I think I liked the administrative side better,” he says. “It’s what I really liked to do, and I was good at it.”
Whether serving on the faculty or in administration, he ranked students his top priority.
“I would always say to them, ‘I see each one of you. You’re not a sea, not a mass. You are individuals to me,’” he recounts. “I knew that if a professor tried, students would respond. I would like to think I made a difference.”
Verrall had returned to the College of Business as Head of the Department of Finance and Economics when he retired in 2000. The time had come to tackle his list of “25 Must-Do Items in Retirement,” which had been patiently waiting for some years. On it were things like building a workshop, keeping the books for the Methodist church and tending to other people and his yard.
Yet, less than two years later, his phone rang.
“Can we talk you back from retirement to serve as Provost?” came the request, and he graciously put aside his list and returned for another two years.
“I was glad to do that, but after the few years I decided it was time to retire a second time,” Verrall shares.
And there he remains, busier than ever, working to accomplish “The 25.”
“The big ones are done, but, well, the electric train isn’t anywhere near where it’s supposed to be,” he begins. “I’m throwing away junk. And I treated myself to a John Deere riding mower.”
His collections of Pogo Possum memorabilia (from the Walt Kelly comic strip) and Black Wing pencils continue to grow. Residing in the campus library is his impressive assemblage of Mississippi money dating from Civil War years forward.
“I focused specifically on $5 paper bills issued either by the U.S. government or individual companies like Mississippi banks, railroads and lumber companies,” he says.
In non-pandemic times, Verrall finds himself on campus at least once a week for visits or lunch with colleagues. And he will also give that impromptu campus tour when the opportunity arises. That notion prompts him to offer a few more tidbits.
“For example, I can take you to Allen Hall’s roof, where you can see the reach of campus from north to south, east to west,” he says.
So, did this man with the four MSU degrees and decades of service ever think about taking his talents elsewhere?
“Every time I even thought about leaving, somebody came along and asked me to be an Associate Dean or Department Head, and I decided I like where I am,” he remarks. “I like the people, the smalltown life and Mississippi State. So I’d just as soon stay right here.”
