When
D. W. Brooks died in Atlanta August 5 at the age of 97, the
founder of Gold
Kist Inc. and Cotton States Insurance Companies left a legacy
of service, innovation
and dedication to the agricultural community of Georgia.

“He was a great man who made immense contributions to
agriculture and the South,”
said Gale Buchanan, dean of the University of Georgia College
of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences.

Along with his many accomplishments in the business field,
Brooks taught agronomy
at the University of Georgia in 1922 at the age of 19, making
him one of the
youngest faculty members at the university.

In recent years, he had served as a visiting professor, which
made him the
oldest professor at the university.

Gold Kist and the College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences initiated
the D. W. Brooks lecture series in 1976, which invites leaders
to address key
issues facing agriculture. The lecture is followed by the D.
W. Brooks Faculty
Awards for Excellence, which are presented to distinguished
faculty members
for their work in teaching, research and extension. These
awards have supported
and moved forward some of the best work of the college,
Buchanan said.

“Mr. Brooks’s great legacy to this college is the Brooks
Awards of Excellence,”
Buchanan said. “But more than that, he was just a great
person.”

In 1972, Brooks was the first living person to be inducted
into the UGA Agricultural
Hall of Fame. He received the Distinguished Agribusiness Award
from the Georgia
Agribusiness Council in 1975 and was named “Man of the Year in
Agriculture in
the South” in 1966 by Progressive Farmer magazine.

Brooks served as a director for the Foundation for American
Agriculture and
the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives and also as a
trustee for the University
of Georgia Foundation.