The four newest members of the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame will be inducted tonight in a ceremony at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.
The members of the class of 2024 are: John Conner Jr., president of the Holden Conner investment management company; George's poultry company Chairman Gary George; Senior Vice President of Oaklawn Racing and Gaming Eric Jackson; and U.S. Irrigation owner Dhu Thompson.
Dean Brent Williams of the Sam M. Walton College of Business, which houses the hall of fame in Fayetteville, said in an October statement that the inductees "are visionary leaders and dedicated advocates for their communities" who represent the best of Arkansas business.
John Conner Sr. founded the Holden Conner Co. in Newport in 1959. It manages investments in agriculture and solar energy.
Conner Jr. began doing farm work in the family business as a teenager before significantly expanding the business's landownings after graduating from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in 1970. He subsequently invested in leveling, irrigation and other farmland improvements and began renting land to other farmers. His Greenway Equipment dealerships are one of the largest John Deere franchisees.
George's is also a family business, a vertically integrated poultry producer that today has sales of nearly $1 billion and thousands of employees. George became president of the company in 1980 at 30 and its chief executive officer in 1994, per his listing in the Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame. He is also a University of Arkansas graduate, later chairing its board of trustees in addition to other positions in several poultry organizations, the J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. board and other Northwest Arkansas civic groups.
Long a fan of the Hot Springs racetrack, Jackson, a Hendrix College alumnus, stepped down as 30-year general manager of Oaklawn Park in 2017 after having created historical horse racing, aka "instant racing," there in the late 1990s. The electronic gaming product allows players to gamble on video replays of already-run races. The innovation's popularity has been called a blessing to the thoroughbred racing industry.
Thompson, a Louisiana native who has a bachelor's degree from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, bought Delta Plastics, which specializes in polytube pipes, in 1996. Polyethylene tubing had applications for cheap gravity furrow irrigation but a short shelf life.
Thompson pioneered a process to clean and recycle the pipe after harvesting and began picking up used pipe his business had sold to farmers to recycle it in-house. Thompson later took the recycled resin and manufactured garbage bags with it at another company, Revolution Bag, selling them to LEED-certified entities and distributors. His U.S. Irrigation in Stuttgart sells Deutz and Iveco power units and Delta Plastics goods.