A new bench that overlooks Janice Hawkins Park has a plaque that bears the name of Troy University’s former Dean of Enrollment, Jim Hutto, who passed away in 2023. Hutto arrived at TROY during the 1984-1985 school year and served students for 17 years. Current and previous staff members remember the culture that he created at TROY.
“Dean Hutto was a good and kind person who taught me it was important to maintain professionalism in work settings while having the ability to enjoy your colleague’s company outside of work, even if you did not see eye to eye on every matter,” said Sohail Agboatwala, Senior Vice Chancellor for Student Services and Administration. “Helen and Dean Hutto were a welcoming family who made every international student feel at home in Troy by opening their home to all of us, especially during the holidays.”
“I look back on it now, enrollment services and admissions are truly a mission first, people always operation, and Jim just had what I consider to be a truly unique ability to really motivate people regarding the mission,” said Buddy Starling, former Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management. “But he was always so great to his people too. There was a great deal of camaraderie. I’m very thankful that Jim hired me. It was a privilege to work for him and work with the team that we had. Those were golden years, and I grew up under Jim’s leadership as a professional. I’m eternally thankful for him.”
How the bench came to be
Jim’s son, Jason, became close friends with Eric Scott after they met at Charles Henderson High School. They would go on to become roommates at Auburn University.
One year while watching the NCAA basketball tournament in their dorm room, Jason made a comment about how awesome and cheesy the “One Shining Moment” montage was. From that point on, Eric decided that he would remind Jason every year about that montage as part of an inside joke.
He would do this through silly and creative ways to keep the joke going. One year he even got Auburn Men’s Basketball Coach, Bruce Pearl, to create a Cameo video for Jason as a personal reminder.
This past April, Jason and his family were on a family vacation when Eric sent him the video for this year’s reminder. At this point, the joke had been running for over 25 years.
“The video showed him going around Troy,” Jason explained. “He went to several spots and talked about our inside jokes from high school and things like that. Towards the end he was sitting down and talking about how he had run out of creative ideas to remind me, then he gets up and the camera zooms in on the bench, and there’s the plaque with my dad’s name on it.”
Eric said that the idea came to him while he was running on campus.
“I wanted something permanent so that he could be remembered,” Eric said. “I started just googling naming opportunities at Troy University. I thought that it would be a great way to honor Jason’s father with it because he was important to me, and I knew that this would mean a great deal to the family.”
“I would have never understood how meaningful that kind of thing could be,” Jason said. “We didn’t tell my mother about it at first. Over the summer we took a family vacation to the beach and stopped in Troy along the way. We just went and sat at the bench, had my mom come over, and surprised her with it.”
Working through grief can be a process. For the Hutto family, listening to stories from friends and family about Jim’s influence and kindness has helped them heal. While a bench is just an object, to Jason it’s a tangible and exclusive way to remember his father in a place that meant so much to him.
“When I saw the bench, what came to my mind was that other than family, this is the place that he poured more of himself into than probably anything else,” Jason said. “He cared about Troy and was proud of the work that he had done there.”
