DR. C.R. SAYRE

LIKE WILL GARRARD BEFORE HIM, JERRY SAYRE was originally from Southern Illinois. Charles Richard Sayre was born on his family's farm near Chrisman, IL, May 23, 1914. Dubbed "Jerry" after a mule, Dr. Sayre has carried the nickname with him throughout his life.

He received bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Illinois. He also earned master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard and in 1950 received Harvard's David R. Wells Prize in Economics.

During World War II, Dr. Sayre served 20 months as a communications and boat officer with Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 37 Fellow Pacific naval officer John F. Kennedy was his good friend. He became superintendent of Delta Branch Experiment Station at Stoneville, MS, in November 1946. Later, he headed the Division of Cotton and Other Fiber Crops and Diseases, Bureau of Plant Industry, USDA.

In 1950, Dr. Sayre was named president and managing director (chief executive officer) of Delta and Pine Land Company's 36,000 acre plantation in Scott, MS. D&PL was Staplcotn's largest member and four years later, he was named to the co-op's Board of Directors.

"When Jerry Sayre was president, he was very active," recalls Board member LeRoy Percy. "He decided it would be of service to growers if Staplcotn expanded its herbicide, insecticide and fertilizer business."

"Jerry was full of ideas, finding solutions to things, always coming up with a better idea to run things," recalls Aven Whittington, who was a member of the Staplservices Board and later served as chairman of Staplcotn's Board.

Future Staplcotn Board chairman Billy Percy served with Sayre on the board of Cotton Incorporated. "e;As you would imagine, he was very much a leader in Cotton Incorporated. He had very definite ideas about how that organization should be run," Percy said. "We had some fairly serious disagreements of form. There was nothing wrong with what he was proposing. It was just that he and I felt like different styles were demanded.

"You never had to worry about what he thought about any particular matter or what course he thought was the best for the group to take if he was involved in it. His positions were very well thought out. Jerry Sayre was clearly a very able, smart, self driven, innovative person," Percy added.

Dr. Sayre served as president and general manager of Staplcotn and as president of Stapldiscount and of Staplservices. He was elected president of the National Cotton Council in 1971 and became chairman of its board the following year.

He was chairman of the board of Leflore Savings and Loan Association and a director of the Central Bank for Cooperatives in Denver, the Bank of Benoit, Lamar Life Insurance and Forest Owners, Inc. He was a Fellow in the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Mississippi Industrial and Technological Research Commission and a collaborating author of agricultural experiment station publications in Kentucky, Georgia and Illinois, and of "Farm Management", an agriculture textbook.

He also served as president of Delta Council, the Delta Area Council of the Boy Scouts and the Mississippi Heart Association. In 1966, he was named Progressive Farmer Magazine's "Man of the Year in Service to Southern Agriculture."

Following his departure from Staplcotn in 1979, Dr. Sayre and Staplcotn Board member Bill Brown operated BSP Corporation, a Leflore County farming concern.