Sparky Reardon: The Model of Servant Leadership

For our latest “Shop Talk”, Coach Bill pays tribute to Ole Miss’ former Dean of Students who changed his life and countless others.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with shop Talk number thirteen. Alex,
It's thirteen, an unlucky number to you. Hopefully you don't
believe in lucky and unlucky numbers. Well, I know we're
not supposed to, but I can't help it. Thirteen's weird.
So I'm going to off set shop Talk number thirteen

(00:24):
with a really great story of a great guy. There's
no way talking about Sparky weird and shop Talk number
thirteen could be unlucky. So we're going to talk about
the dean of students at Old Miss when I was
in college and what he taught me in shop Talk

(00:45):
number thirteen. We'll be right back after these brief messages
from our general sponsors. Okay, everybody, Shop Talk number thirteen.

(01:05):
Sparky Rearding. So the first time I ever met Sparky,
I was a student at Ole Miss, a freshman, and
I was in freshman orientation and every freshman piled into
this large auditorium and this guy, I would say he
was about five foot ten, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds.

(01:29):
He was a robust fellow rolls up to the podium
and he has on khakis and a green sports jacket,
and I mean like green. For purposes of this conversation,
you need to know that the Grove at ole Miss
is a ten to fifteen acre plot of ground right

(01:51):
in the middle of campus that is tree lined in
beautiful and grass, and it's basically a park in the
Citl Center campus. It's absolutely gorgeous. So when Sparky takes
the podium, he says my name, and he's got on
this green jacket. He said, my name is Sparky Reard
and I'm the DINA students here, and no, I am

(02:12):
not the growth. He was big and green. He was
this interesting guy. And when you when you show up
as a freshman, you think DINA students, you know that's
the one guy you don't want to mess with. Just
leave the If you never meet the DNA students in college,
you're probably in good shape. Sparky was different. He went

(02:37):
on to welcome us to school. I started my freshman
year never really paid Sparky reared In any any much
attention until my junior year. And I was walking to
class across campus like everybody else, and I noticed, here
comes Dean Reardon and as I passed by him, he

(02:57):
looks at me and he says good morning, Bill and
just walks by, and I'm like, how does this guy
know my name? And then my senior year, I signed
up for a leadership class and he was actually a professor,
and I got to know Sparky so much of what

(03:20):
I know and learn and still carry with me today
about how to coach, how to mentor how to run
a business, how to be a father and a husband,
the basics of that was imprinted into me in that

(03:40):
leadership class that Sparky taught me. What I found out
was Sparky was from Clarksville or Clark's del Macy's, from
the Delta Mississippian. He too had gone Old missus A
as a freshman, and he started writing a column for
the Daily Mississippian. It was called sparks Plug. Fell in

(04:05):
love with school, went off and taught high school for
a little bit, was brought back, took a job in
administration at Ole Miss, and one thing led to another,
and he became the dean of students at Ole Miss.
Sparky was the dean of students at Old Miss when

(04:25):
the football team still or the band at the football
games and the basketball games still played Dixie and when
everybody in the stands raved the Confederate flag at the games.
And Sparky was was one of those guys that could

(04:47):
transcend difficult moments and reach you. And I'm going to
tell you what his secret sauce was. He knew those
he served. He literally sought out to look, this is
a university. Now. This guy literally sought out to learn

(05:11):
the names of the people that went to school at
ole Miss, all the students. And I'm not saying he
knew every name of every student, but he knew a
ton of them. He would look at composites and try
to remember faces a name so that when he walked
by it would just simply call you by your name
and make you feel included and make you feel like

(05:31):
you mattered. His version of leadership was to serve his
community and to know his community. In his community were kids.
Here's where Sparky really mattered to me. When Chucky Mullins,
who was a football player at All Miss that broke

(05:51):
his neck, fell on the football field and a group
of us and my fraternity decided to try to start
a philanthropic event which was going to be a full
patted football game to play and honor of Chucky Mullins
for another kid in Mississippi who'd hurt himself on a

(06:13):
football field. We needed the field, we needed equipment, we
needed publicity, we needed all kinds of things to start
this fledgling idea. And I went to the dean students.
I went sparky, but I went sparky after talking to athletics,
talking to the athletic department, talking to the administration, and
everybody's like, y'all are stupid, y'all are crazy, We're not

(06:35):
doing this and everything, and I went sparking. I told
him my idea, and Sparky thought it was great. Sparky
walked us through it. Today, that little football game is
now the largest Greek philanthropy project in the entire United States.
And it only happened because we had a leader in

(06:59):
Adidas students at the University of Mississippi at Ole Miss
named Sparky Reardon, who saw the passion and some students
to do something good and worked alongside them to make
it happen. At Old Miss. The fraternity of the Greek
system is also is very very large, very ingrained in

(07:23):
the fabric and the culture of the school. Sparky became
the leading one of the leading voices in the nation
across the country for the anti hazing movement, and I
remember him telling us that the culture that you wanted

(07:47):
to create, a brotherhood and friendship and sisterhood and all
of that, that hazing had no place in it. And
back in those days, hazing was kind of a ritual
on a right of passage, while certainly today hazing is
rightly so viewed as something that is subservient and wrong.

(08:11):
It took a man like Sparky to change culture. But
he didn't do it with a heavy hand. He did
it by serving and explaining and walking alongside young impressiable
minds and helping them to see the right things and
to see the way to do things. Sparky Reardon was

(08:36):
the model of a servant leader. And here's what he did.
He sought to know your name. He sought to call
you by your name. He sought to see you as
a human being. He sought to find out what made
you tick. He sought to find out what your dreams
and goals and inhibitions were, and he sought to all

(09:00):
those inhibitions and help those goals come to fruition. And
then he sought to make sure that you were engaging
in things that were healthy and good for you and
good for your learning. But he never did it with
a heavy hand, by pushing down on you. He did
it by walking that and serving alongside. So what does

(09:26):
leadership look like today? What does servant look leadership look
like today? And I look across the spectrum of our politics,
and I look across the spectrum of many of our businesses.
I look across the spectrum of some of our families,
and I see this think like me, do like me,

(09:47):
or you're my enemy mentality. And I see this believe
like me and think like me, or I can't even
be in the same room as you. And I just
wonder what what if we had more sparky reardons, someone
who's willing to see who you are for who you are,

(10:07):
meet you are, where you are, and serve you and
in doing so, leads you. And so I go back
to that leadership class I took from Sparky, and I
understand that yeah we had textbooks, and yes we had
reading materials, and yes it was a classroom, but it
wasn't the materials and the classroom and the text that

(10:28):
I was learning from. It was the man himself, Sparky Reardon,
a servant leader who without his example, I'm not really
sure if I'd have done a lot of things out
have done. So Shop Talk number thirteen, guys, is being

(10:51):
a servant leader, and the greatest illustration of that is
Sparky Reardon. We got to start meeting people where they are.
We got to spart talking about the proper ways to
conduct ourselves. We've got to start helping those in and
around us to reach their goals in dreams by serving

(11:12):
them and walking alongside them. We got to start understanding
that just because you don't look like me, think like me,
or come from where I come from, or even have
the same viewpoints and perspectives that I do, that we
can still have conversations and serve one another, and then
serve one another we can lead. So if you talk

(11:34):
about an army and normal folks, and you talk about
servant leadership, we need to talk about being like Sparky.
So shop Talk number thirteen, instead of being sparks Plug
is plug and spark. I hope you'll think about it.
I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week.