By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
The UGA Honors Program will receive a $250,000 gift in honor of J.H. Carmical, a 1917  university alumnus and veteran journalist who died last year at the age of 104.
The gift will be used to create a fund to strengthen the Honors Program by expanding the program’s lecture series and other academic initiatives, says Jere Morehead, associate provost and Honors Program director. The main lobby of Moore College, the Honors Program’s new quarters, will be named for Carmical when the program moves into the renovated 1874 building later this year, Morehead says.
Carmical, born in 1895 in what is now Fulton County, received a journalism degree from UGA and for 46 years was a financial reporter and editor for the New York Times. After retiring to Georgia in 1967, he operated a farm near his birthplace until injuries from a fall forced him to enter a nursing home, where he died June 10, 2000.
Trustees of his estate created the John Huland Carmical Foundation, which has as one of its major goals supporting academic programs at UGA.
“John Huland Carmical was a distinguished UGA alumnus who was able to amass his modest wealth while remaining very private,” says John G. Alston, president of the Car-mical Foundation and a friend of Carmical, as well as a trustee of the UGA Foundation. “He always maintained an appreciation for what he had received from the university, and this gift to the Honors Program seems an appropriate way for his foundation to have him remembered.”
The Honors Program provides accelerated learning opportunities for UGA’s most academically talented students. Honors students attend small seminar classes taught by senior faculty members. Participants receive individualized faculty advising and assistance and can design and pursue independent interdisciplinary majors that culminate with an Honors thesis or project.
With about 2,200 participants, UGA’s Honors Program is among the largest in the country and has been cited in national publications as one of the nation’s best.
Morehead says the Carmical gift is one of the largest the 40-year-old Honors Program has ever received. “This generous gift will significantly enhance the intellectual climate for Honors students, and provides vital support to continue building one of the finest Honors Programs in the United States,” Morehead says.
Carmical was born in the community of Rico, which in 1895 was in Campbell County. The area is now the southern part of Fulton County.
After graduating from the university, he went to New York City, where he attended graduate school at Columbia University and worked as a financial analyst for J.P. Morgan Co. before joining the New York Times in 1922.
As a reporter and later an associate editor, he travelled throughout the world, covering such stories as the development of oil fields and growth of the oil industry, the transformation of railroads from steam to diesel engines, and the 1929 stock market crash.
He retired to a 608-acre farm near his birthplace, where he grew corn, cotton and grain, often trying experimental farming techniques. He continued to enjoy travelling until health problems prevented him from taking trips.
At the age of 104, Carmical was believed to be UGA’s oldest graduate when he died.
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