A Tribute to Thomas G. Dyer

James C. Cobb

The passing of Tom Dyer last October was an enormous loss not only for the Institute of Higher Education but also for the University of Georgia as a whole. During his tenure, Professor Dyer increased the stature and productivity of the Institute with targeted hires, named endowments, and enhanced support for research and graduate education. Likewise, he was instrumental in supporting university-level initiatives that focused on academic excellence in each of the three missions of the land-grant university.

But Dr. Dyer’s influence is more than statistics, and rankings, and programs, his legacy of leadership will be here for generations to come.

As a tribute to Professor Dyer, we asked James C. Cobb, Professor and Spalding Distinguished Research Professor at UGA, for permission to publish parts of the eloquent eulogy he delivered for his longtime friend. Below are segments from Professor Cobb’s speech, which describe his good friend and ours, Professor Thomas G. Dyer.

From Professor James C. Cobb….

On character (from a book Cobb dedicated to Dyer): “In the course of a truly distinguished career, Tom Dyer has led, supported, sustained, and otherwise made possible more good things for the University of Georgia and the people of the state in general than anybody I know. On a personal note, I don’t know if there are truly no friends like old friends, but I do know that there are few friends of any vintage like Tom Dyer. We met as graduate students at the University of Georgia in 1972, and over the intervening years he has offered unfailingly wise counsel and has done more thoughtful, helpful, and courageous things on my behalf than I could ever recount, and, in fact, has probably done even more of these than I know. His intelligence, integrity, and rich sense of humor are legendary not only around Athens but across the state. Although he was born in Missouri (and therefore persists in thinking he knows more about farming than I do), Tom Dyer is, in the best sense of the term, one of the finest Georgians I have been blessed to know.”

On management style: “When he assumed responsibility for any administrative or academic unit, he made it a point not simply to urge those under his charge to drop into his office but to drop into theirs also. This was in no sense mere managerial artifice, for Tom was a genuinely thoughtful and caring person who would soon know not only the names of all the people who worked under his supervision, but the names of their spouses and offspring as well. For my money, there is no greater compliment to a leader in the academic world than the personal regard he or she enjoys among those charged with holding together the real world of leaking pipes, cracking paint, and worn tires.”

On leadership and loyalty: “Any number of Tom’s administrative accomplishments and contributions could have been career makers in and of themselves, even if some of the most important of them were rendered largely out of the spotlight. Surely this was true of the wisdom, sensitivity, and firmness he brought to the Office of Academic Affairs in the wake of the Jan Kemp debacle when the University’s academic integrity and reputation were teetering precariously in the balance. The fact that these were not allowed to topple and shatter in those critical weeks and months when old UGA was still reeling and struggling to regain its balance was clearly a precondition for the justifiable pride we can now take in the standing it enjoys today. For that reason alone, all of us who truly love the University of Georgia should feel a special indebtedness to Tom, who I might add, held a reciprocally deep and abiding affection for this institution easily comparable to that of any of the biggest, barkingest, red-britches-wearing Bulldog boosters who ever lived.”

And finally: “If a person’s impact on those around him may be gauged, however perversely, by the number of people he left behind who always meant to thank or commend him but never got around to it, then Tom was surely a phenomenal human presence during his lifetime. If, beyond that, a person’s full and enduring measure lies in how little he coveted the thanks and praise he so justly merited, then Tom Dyer was truly a man for the ages.”