Four new members of the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame will be inducted tonight in a ceremony at the State Capitol Convention Center in Little Rock.
The members of the Class of 2024 are: John Connor Jr., President of Holden Connor Investment Management Company. Gary George, Chairman of George's Poultry Farming Company; Eric Jackson, senior vice president of Oaklawn Racing and Gaming. and Dew Thompson, owner of U.S. Irrigation.
Brent Williams, dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business, where the Hall of Fame is located in Fayetteville, said in a statement in October that the inductees are “visionary leaders and dedicated advocates for their communities. ” and represents the best of Arkansas business.
John Connor Sr. founded Holden Connor in 1959 in Newport. The company manages investments in agriculture and solar energy.
Conner Jr. began farming in the family business as a teenager before significantly expanding the land holdings of the business after graduating from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in 1970. He then invested in land clearing, irrigation, and other farm improvements and began renting out land to other farmers. . His Greenway Equipment dealership is one of his largest John Deere franchisees.
George's is also a family-owned, vertically integrated poultry production company with sales of nearly $1 billion and thousands of employees. George became president of the company in 1980 at the age of 30 and became chief executive officer in 1994, according to the Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame. He is also an alumnus of the University of Arkansas, and has since served on several poultry organizations, including the J.B. Hunt Board of Directors of Transport Services, Inc., in addition to other positions on other northwest Arkansas civic organizations. I served as the chairman of the committee.
Jackson, a Hendricks College graduate who was a longtime fan of Hot Springs Racetrack, founded Historic Horse Racing, also known as “Instant Racing,” at Oak Lawn Park in the late 1990s before joining Oak in 2017 after a 30-year stint at Oak Lawn Park. He resigned as general manager of Lorne Park. This electronic gaming product allows players to gamble on video replays of races that have already been run. This revolutionary popularity is said to be a blessing to the Thoroughbred horse racing industry.
Mr. Thompson, a Louisiana native with a bachelor's degree from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, acquired Delta Plastics, which specialized in polytube pipes, in 1996. Polyethylene tubing has been applied to inexpensive gravity furrow irrigation, but has a short shelf life.
Thompson pioneered the process of cleaning and recycling pipes after harvest, and began collecting used pipes he sold to farmers and recycling them internally. Thompson then used the recycled resin to make garbage bags at another company, Revolution Bag, which he sold to LEED certification organizations and distributors. His U.S. Irrigation facility in Stuttgart sells Deutz and Iveco power units and Delta Plastics products.
