Outstanding Alumni

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 1, 2007

Lee Elliff Pound
(417) 625-9355

JOPLIN, MO (SNS) - Two longtime Missouri Southern supporters and leaders in their fields, Don E. Flinn, M.D., ’42 and Kevin Williams, ’87 have been tabbed for the 2007 Outstanding Alumni awards.

Don Flinn, M.D.

Flinn, born in Tulsa, Okla., in 1923, graduated from Joplin High School in 1940 and from what was then Joplin Junior College in 1942. He attended Harvard Medical school graduating in 1946. Following an internship at Boston City Hospital in Boston, Mass.,

 

Flinn entered the United States Army Air Force where he served as a Flight Surgeon at Air Force hospitals in France and Germany. Flinn was recalled to active military service during the Korean War and also during the Vietnam War. He retired, as a Colonel, from Air Force in 1967. During his military career Flinn served on the NASA Medical Evaluation team charged with examining all astronauts prior to their selection to the Mercury and Gemini space projects.

 

In addition to his military service, Flinn completed a Residency in Psychiatry at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka Kan., in 1950 and served as the Chief of Adult Inpatient Service at the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angles, Ca., and as Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 until 1971. He would then become director of the Institute’s Outpatient Department and Associate Professor of Psychiatry in Residence.

 

From 1975 until 1981, Flinn was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas Medical School in San Antonio, Tex. and the Assistant Chief of Staff of Psychiatry Service at the San Antonio Veterans Administration Hospital.

 

In 1981, he was named the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Texas Tech School of Medicine in Lubbock, Tex.

 

In 1988, Flinn returned to the UCLA School of Medicine where he served as Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and as Assistant Dean. He was named Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine in 1993.

 

Flinn is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American College of Psychiatrists and he is a member of the Aerospace Medical Association. He is a member, and past president, of the United States Air Force Psychiatric Society and is a former Councilor of the Southern California Psychiatric Society and is a Life Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association.

 

Flinn and his wife, Sonia, have been married 60 years and have three children. They live in Eugene, Ore.

Kevin Williams
Williams is the Chief Financial Officer at Jack Henry and Associates Inc., in Monett. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Missouri Southern State University in 1987.

Williams, a Certified Public Account, served as a senior manager at the accounting firm Baird, Kurtz & Dobson from 1987 until 1998, when he left the company to accept a position with Jack Henry. In 2001 Williams was named the company’s chief financial officer.

 

As CFO at Jack Henry, Williams oversees the company’s annual revenues of more than $592 million. His work takes him from the company’s corporate headquarters in Monett to board rooms on Wall Street in New York City. He works with wide variety of people from company employees and customers, to the members of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

Williams is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and of the Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants. He is also a member of the Monett Chamber of Commerce and serves on the Advisory Board of the Robert Plaster School of Business at MSSU.

 

Williams and his wife Toni, also a Missouri Southern graduate, have one daughter, Tallie Jo. They reside in Monett.