Contact: Phil Hearn
A 1941 Mississippi State graduate who carved out a longtime career with General Electric is bequeathing more than $2.3 million in company stock to his alma mater to provide scholarships for deserving engineering students.
James C. Forbes of Dallas, Texas, a sharecropper's son who grew up in the Mississippi Delta during the Depression, has altered his will to leave 75,000 shares of GE stock to MSU's Bagley College of Engineering at the time of his death.
"I owe a lot to Mississippi State," said the 86-year-old Tomnolen native who completed his electrical engineering degree the same year Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor triggered America's entry into World War II.
Engineering dean A. Wayne Bennett said Forbes' donation will provide scholarships to college majors who maintain at least a 3.0 grade-point average. The value of the stock, projected at $2.3 million, will make Forbes one of the college's top donors, he added.
Forbes played baseball for the venerable coach Dudy Noble during his student days at MSU--eating corn flakes most days to save money on meals. After graduating third academically in the class of '41, he took a job with GE for $1 an hour.
In 1948, he married Hazel Ruby, a West Virginia coal miner's daughter, and began investing in GE stock after being transferred to Dallas in 1955. The couple eventually accumulated wealth through hard work, savings and moderate living.
"My needs are pretty simple," said Forbes, now a widower who still lives in the same Dallas house he and Hazel bought nearly 50 years ago. "It will be more satisfying to leave it (the GE stock) to students than for me to use it."
DALLAS EDITOR: Tomnolen is a Webster County town in East Central Mississippi.