The 14th Annual Newport Alumni Hall of Fame Banquet will be held on Thursday, Aug. 8, at 6 p.m. at the Newport High School cafeteria.
Hosted by the Newport Special School District Charitable Foundation, the event will induct the following outstanding graduates into the Newport Alumni Hall of Fame.
A 1990 graduate, Jennifer Hare James received a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Business from the University of Arkansas in May 1994. She was recognized as the John W. White Outstanding Student in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Life Sciences at her commencement and was recently honored as the 2024 Outstanding Alumna, where she presented the keynote address.
James is a fourth-generation rice, soybean, and corn farmer, and part owner of H&J Land Company, a diversified operation of value-added row crops, a grain warehouse and cleaning facility, as well as an automated container loading facility to export specialty soybeans. She is part owner and CEO of Auvergne Grain Co. LLC. In 2017, James was recognized by Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture as the Farmer of the Year for conservation efforts on their farm and her leadership in sustainability.
In 2019, James received recognition as Rice Farmer of the Year at the USA Rice Outlook Conference. That same year, she was elected as the first woman to the Riceland Foods, Inc. Board of Directors, the largest miller and marketer of rice in the United States. She served as chairman of the USA Rice Sustainability Committee and helped guide the industry in the space. She currently serves as vice chairman of the Arkansas Rice Farmers board, a member of the Merchants and Planters Bank board, the Agribusiness Industry Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and a member of the U.S. EPA Farm Ranch and Rural Communities Advisory Committee.
James and her husband, Greg, have one son, Dylan, who has returned to the farm as the fifth generation.
Kim Hout graduated from NHS in 1978. She began her insurance career as a customer service representative for McCartney, Manning, McDonald & Guinn, Inc. in Newport, working her way up to become president and co-owner of the agency before selling to Merchants & Planters Bank, where she remained as agency president until moving to Little Rock in 2004.
In 1994, Hout was honored by the Independent Insurance Agents of Arkansas (IIAA) with the Charlotte Patterson Memorial Award as Insurance Woman of the Year and was elected to serve as the 99th president of the IIAA in 1999, the first woman to hold this office in the organization’s history. In 2001, Hout received the IIAA’s highest honor, being presented with the Allan Kennedy Memorial Award as the Insurance Agent of the Year.
From 2004 to 2022, Hout served as vice president of agency operations and marketing for the Mark V. Williamson Co., Inc. in Little Rock. She was inducted into the Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame in 2022 just before beginning her retirement. Hout was an active member of the Rotary Club of Little Rock, a Paul Harris Fellow, and was instrumental in forming the first Interact Club at Catholic High School. She is a past member and chairperson for the CARTI Foundation board of directors and currently serves on the CARTI Operating board of directors, as well as the Arkansas Insurance Hall of Fame board.
Hout has two children, Stacy Allen and Jud Shumate, and six grandchildren.
Dr. David Hurley Sibley, class of 1970, graduated from Tulane University in 1976 with both a bachelor of science degree with honors and a bachelor of arts degree with honors. In 1975 he was accepted as a visiting student in biochemistry at Yale University and entered Tulane Medical School in New Orleans in 1977. In 1981 he was accepted for internship and residency in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology at the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala. He is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, and interventional cardiology.
While at UAB, Sibley received a grant to explore his idea of how to measure blood flow in the coronary arteries as a way to better determine the severity of coronary artery disease. In 1986, he was asked to present this data at the American Heart Association meeting in Washington D.C. and later published this work in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This led to worldwide lectures in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, and New Orleans. This procedure, measuring coronary flow reserve, later became fractional flow reserve and today is used as instantaneous wave-free ratio, or iFR.
This is now used daily in most cardiac cath labs in the world.
Sibley started the interventional cardiovascular program at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham in 1987 and has performed over 30,000 invasive cardiac procedures and 15,000 interventional coronary procedures. He is currently chief of the division of cardiovascular disease, director of the interventional crdiac catheterization lab, and president of cardiology PC at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham.
He has been married to his wife, Holly, for 49 years. They have three daughters and four grandchildren.
John Conner Jr., NHS class of 1966, graduated from the Sam Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas in 1970 and was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He joined the National Guard in 1970 and was married in 1971. John serves as president of Holden-Conner Company in Newport. He purchased his first farm in 1972, which has developed into a more than 120,000-acre operation in the delta.
Conner acquired his first John Deere store in 1988, which has grown to include 30 John Deere stores from Sikeston and Charleston, Missouri to Grady, Arkansas. Conner serves as chairman of Greenway Equipment Company, which was named one of the top three franchisees in the nation and employs 1,600 people. Greenway Equipment has donated $250,000 to the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business and the Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food, and Life Sciences, and has committed $2 million to the UofA Division of Agriculture.
Conner recently expanded into new industries, purchasing Frank A. Rogers Construction in 2019 and Scott Petroleum in 2021. In 2022, the Conner family funded the creation of the Mary Alice Holden Conner Memorial Park in Newport in memory of John’s mother.
Conner has been married to his wife, Andrea, for 30 years. He has four children and seven grandchildren.
The Hall of Fame was created to recognize and honor Newport alumni who have made exceptional contributions in their chosen field while exhibiting outstanding leadership, character, and service to their community.
Tickets for the event are on sale now at the Newport Area Chamber of Commerce, 201 Hazel Street in Newport, and are $30 per person. Checks can be made payable to the NSD Charitable Foundation. For more info, call (870) 523-3618 or email newportfoundation@yahoo.com.
Images provided by the Newport Area Chamber of Commerce
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