M.L. “Red” Cashion’53
Daniel “Dan” Feehan ’73
Thomas P. Richards ’65

By Sommer Hamilton

Life is a three-legged stool, a 2006 Mays Outstanding Alumni once told his son. In every successful life, there are three key elements: family, career, and personal development. If you emphasize one part too much, the whole thing can topple.

“Happiness and success are in all three legs. And son, you’ve got to find that balance,” Chad Feehan echoed of his father Dan Feehan’s advice.

For the past 15 years, Mays Business School has honored alumni who were masters at balancing that stool. Not only successful in business, these graduates raised healthy families and made names for themselves in community service and philantrophy. They developed their own personal interests in the process, building values and characters their children and grandchildren and those they mentored would seek to emulate.

The three honorees in this year’s Outstanding Alumni class add the latest bit of color and balance to the first 15 years of Mays’ alumni awards program. That’s true whether their earliest memories were of being shooed out of Kyle Field namesake Dean Edwin Jackson Kyle’s house, like Red Cashion ’53; or their successes in big oil started out small, working drilling rigs for summers in college, like Tom Richards ’65; or their lives and livelihoods were influenced by a high school crush that turned into a 40-year love affair, like Dan Feehan ’73.

Time and again, words of respect for the 2006 honorees at this fall’s ceremony reflected on the themes of Mays’ and Texas A&M’s finest nutured qualities.

We love him for the person he is and the things he’s always taught us, not for anything great he’s done out there in the world…

I heard my father’s voice in my head, my hero, my mentor…

Without Tom Richards at the head of Grey Wolf, our industry would be without some of the lustre it now has…

Drawing the 2006 Outstanding Alumni Awards ceremony to its close, Dean Jerry Strawser reflected on the impact of those honored for their balanced dedication to family, career and self improvement. “Texas A&M has a wonderful present, we have a great future… but we wouldn’t be here without a great past, and I think you’ve just seen that tonight.”

Here’s more about the 2006 class of Outstanding Alumni:

M.L. “Red” Cashion’53, CPCU, chairman emeritus of Anco Insurance and a retired NFL referee	Daniel “Dan” Feehan ’73,  president and CEO of CashAmerica, Inc.	Thomas P. Richards ’65, chairman, president and CEO of Grey Wolf, Inc.