Carol Jones to receive business excellence award

Ozarks Technical Community College is handing out its fifth annual Excellence in Business Award, and the 2009 recipient is one of the area's most well-known real estate leaders.

Carol Jones will be honored during an April 3 ceremony at OTC. She joins Great Southern Bank founder Bill Turner, SRC Holdings Corp. CEO Jack Stack, members of the O'Reilly family and hotelier John Q. Hammons as award recipients.

The Students in Free Enterprise team at OTC chooses the honorees based on seven criteria: leadership of an area business; entrepreneurial success; innovative business growth; the ability to overcome challenges; support for educational development; a desire for customer-driven quality; and support for community enrichment opportunities.

Jones has decades of real estate experience, the most significant being Carol Jones, Realtors, the firm she founded in 1983 before selling it to Iowa Realty Corp., an affiliate of Warren Buffet's Home Services America.

She returned as CEO of the company in 2000 and served in that role for eight years; the firm boasted more than 400 agents when Jones retired in November.

Jones said the OTC honor is a welcome surprise.

"I'm lucky to live in Springfield - I don't know if this would have happened anywhere else," she said, adding that despite her retirement, she still checks into the office regularly. "I love all of those people - they're my family. I could never give them up completely."

Numerous real estate agents across the region can trace their professional history back to Jones. Mike Wilhoit, who founded Wilhoit Properties, began working for Jones & Co., the firm she owned at the time with then-husband Jim, in 1974.

"I started working for her right out of college, and I've known her ever since," said Wilhoit, who sold Wilhoit Properties in 1998. "I would have to thank Carol for a lot of what I learned. She was an unbelievable teacher - she's very patient and extremely good at what she does."

Wilhoit also cited Jones' community involvement, in addition to her real estate acumen. Among her projects is the Carol Jones Recovery Center for Women, a drug- and alcohol-treatment center. She donated the property to found the facility 23 years ago. She also has supported Boys & Girls Club, Family Violence Center and Habitat for Humanity of Springfield.

Jones said she hopes the hundreds of agents who have worked for her and with her throughout the years have been able to learn something from their time together, particularly from her work ethic.

"I was raised poor, and I thought that if I worked hard enough I wouldn't have to be poor all my life," she said, referring to her humble upbringing in Quapaw, Okla., where her father owned a filling station on Route 66. "I think that the agents watched me, and I hope they've learned a lot from that. Of course, they taught me a lot, too - all of us there were kind of in school together."[[In-content Ad]]