Kerr Center’s President Jim Horne Honored with Henry Bellmon Award
Dr. James E. “Jim” Horne, president and CEO of the Kerr Center, received the inaugural Henry Bellmon Award for Sustainability on Thursday evening, September 16, at the Mayo Hotel in downtown Tulsa.
About 250 attended the awards gala, sponsored by Sustainable Tulsa and the Southside Tulsa Rotary Club.
The winner of the Bellmon Award was chosen for his balanced efforts towards sustainability—for promoting quality of life for all (people), responsible economic growth (profit) and environmental stewardship (planet).
Horne received the honor for his dynamic and effective leadership of the Kerr Center since its establishment in 1985, as well as his tireless work for sustainable agriculture regionally and nationally.
Pat Hoerth, one of Henry Bellmon’s three daughters, read from the foreword to Jim Horne’s 2001 book, The Next Green Revolution, before revealing the winner of the top award bearing her father’s name.
“Dr. Horne has worked all his life for sustainability,” she said.
“This is a great honor,” Horne said in accepting the award. Horne said that he knew Bellmon during his second term as Oklahoma governor is the late 1980s, and held him in very high regard.
He admired Bellmon for his integrity and independent thinking, as well as his farming roots and work on behalf of soil conservation and clean water.
Horne told the audience that they have “the opportunity to save the earth.”
“Sustainability is the only way,” he added.
The theme of the awards and the evening was what event organizers referred to as the triple bottom line: people, profits, and planet. All three are essential aspects of sustainability, and an award was given for each, in addition to the Bellmon Award.
Earlier in the evening Horne had accepted the “quality of life for all” award for the 25 years of work he has directed at the Kerr Center. Accomplishments include working to establish the farm-to-school program, promoting farmers’ markets, numerous educational events, publications and web resources, farmer grants, and research and demonstrations done at the Kerr Ranch near Poteau.
The M.E.T., Tulsa’s recycling pioneer, the Metropolitan Environmental Trust, received the Environmental Stewardship Award. The M.E.T. has recycled more than 48 million pounds of materials and distributed more than 75,000 trees since they were founded twenty-three years ago.
Goodwill Industries of Tulsa won the Responsible Economic Growth Award. Continuously operating since 1927, Goodwill is a pioneer in “programs that take items out of the waste stream and use the revenues generated from those items to create a significant economic impact on the community through providing jobs and job training for people with barriers to employment.
Another Bellmon daughter, Ann McFerron, spoke about her father’s attitude towards sustainability. He took the long view, she said. When he was his 70s, he planted a grove of pecan trees on his farm near Billings, knowing it would be fifteen years before the nuts could be harvested.
He died last Septmember, she said, and just this year the trees began to bear. He knew he might not live to see them bear, she said, but planted the trees so that his children and grandchildren would enjoy many harvests.
Bellmon was a member of the Oklahoma legislature, served as the 18th and 23rd governor of Oklahoma (the first Republican to hold that office), and was a two-term United States senator.
