Left to right, SAU President Dr. David Rankin and Toni Rankin, Louis and Martha Blanchard, Lynn and Jerry Mayfield.
The Louis Blanchard Accounting Endowment was established by Jerry and Lynn Mayfield and The Madison Charitable Foundation, Inc.
Blanchard came to SAU (then Southern State College) in 1956 as a professor of accounting with the notion that teaching was a temporary thing. He retired as chair of the Department of Accounting in the 1990s with more than 42 years of dedicated service and of indelible impact on generations of accounting students. In 1998, Blanchard received the Arkansas Society of Certified Public Accountants Lifetime Achievement Award and was the 1989 SAU Honor Professor, among other recognitions in his distinguished career at SAU.
Jerry Mayfield, a former student of Blanchard, graduated cum laude in 1970 from Southern State College/SAU with a B.B.A. in Accounting and is recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus. While at SSC/SAU he was vice president of the Accounting Club.
The year after finishing his degree, Mayfield, a native of Springhill, La., became a certified public accountant. He became a partner with Arthur Anderson and Company in 1982. The next few years saw him serving as executive chairman and CFO of Rainbow Chevron, Inc.; chairman, president and CEO of Satellink Communications, Inc.; president and CEO of Universal Ensco, Inc.; and has recently retired as CEO from Universal Pegasus, Inc. which is one of the largest gas pipelines in the United States. He is still serving on Universal Pegasus’ Board of Directors.
Mayfield has served on many boards including: Acadiana Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors for Lafayette, La., the Junior Achievement Board of Directors for Lafayette, La. and the Evangeline Area Boy Scouts of Lafayette, La.
Mayfield and his wife, Lynn, currently reside in Houston, Texas. They have three sons, J. Kelly, Matthew (deceased), and J. Luke, as well as one daughter, Ashley, and four grandchildren, Molly, Sadie, Lucy, and Chance.
