MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: A GUIDING LIGHT HALL OF FAMER FRANK HAYES INSPIRES OTHERS BY DWAIN HEBDA Frank Hayes, longtime CPA and founder of Frank Hayes & Associates, was a 2009 inductee into the Omaha Business Hall of Fame. This remarkable moment was part of a remarkable life, and the capstone of a journey so unlikely that years later, he still speaks of it in tones tinged with awe. “It was absolutely, positively, something I thought would never happen,” he said. “Keep in mind who I am: I’m a person from a little town, Mendenhall, Mississippi; 10 brothers and sisters; raised on a farm, some days when I was a little kid not even having food to eat; went to segregated schools; didn’t have much money, didn’t have a lot of mentors.” He continued, “Going from that to where the business community recognized me for my accomplishments is amazing. Omaha has so many great businesspeople, and to be in that group is still almost unbelievable.” If Hayes’ life had played out as typecast, he might still be scraping a subsistence out of the Mississippi earth as his father and grandfather, farmers both, had done. From a young age, however, Frank Hayes has dreamed differently. “Living a farmer’s life meant working very hard, because we farmed the land with our hands. There wasn’t a lot of equipment,” he said. “School became an escape for me. My mother encouraged that; my dad, not so much.” His mother moved him to Omaha in search of better opportunities and it didn’t take long to pay off. Originally bent on medical school, Hayes’ life was altered by his high school chemistry teacher. “He said ‘Frank, this came across my desk and I thought of you,’” Hayes recalled. “I looked at the information and I was like, OK, this is about accounting. I knew nothing about accounting. But it had a scholarship component, so I was going to look into it, because I wanted to go to college.” Hayes was able to attend Creighton University, where he majored in accounting and, as was allowed then, passed his CPA exam as an undergrad. He also earned valuable experience working part-time for the Internal Revenue Service, which continued full time after graduation. By age 24, he’d taken his career into the private sector, landing with Grant Thornton LLP. 25 nebraska society of cpas W W W . N E S C P A . O R G
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