Evansville Regional Business Hall of Fame honors Calloway, Hardwick, Carpenter, Koch

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — A long-time presence in local insurance, a utility company executive and two deceased individuals who left their mark in real estate and industry are new laureates in the Evansville Regional Business Hall of Fame.

The announcement of 2021 Active Laureates Harold Calloway and Susan Hardwick and 2021 Historical Laureates Willard Carpenter and Walter Koch was made this week by Junior Achievement of Southwestern Indiana and Old National Bank.

Induction ceremonies will be during a breakfast at 8 a.m. Dec. 2 at Old National Events Plaza.

Individuals are nominated for outstanding civic and business contributions to Southwestern Indiana, as well as business excellence, vision, innovations, inspiring leadership, courageous thinking and community service.

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“One thing that struck me during the selection process is the amount of trailblazers and hugely impactful individuals, both recent and historical, that have sprung from Evansville,” said Daniela Vidal, chancellor of Ivy Tech Evansville. “In many cases, most people are not aware of the size of their impact, which is why the JA Evansville Regional Business Hall of Fame is important to do.

“It really helps to highlight and bring forward these incredible stories that really build pride and inspire our up-and-coming leaders of what is possible,” Vidal said.

Harold Calloway

Born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Calloway was raised on a family farm during the height of the civil rights movement.

"When (white children's) school bus broke down, they got a new one, and we didn't," Calloway told the Courier & Press in 2005. "They had a gymnasium to play basketball; we played outside, even in the winter. They had indoor toilets, and we had outdoor toilets. But what are you going to do? You keep on until things get better. We weren't going to be discouraged."

Things did get better for Calloway, who relocated to Evansville with his wife, Frankye, after attending college in Tennessee and after Army service in Vietnam.

He worked as director of financial aid for the University of Southern Indiana (he was USI's first Black administrator) and then as a State Farm agent in Evansville for 34 years before retiring in 2019.

Calloway also was involved in local politics in various roles, including a brief time on the Evansville City Council where he finished an unexpired term. He's a former member of the Evansville Water and Sewer Utility Board and chaired former Mayor Russ Lloyd Jr.'s transition team after Lloyd's 1999 election.

He's a member of the USI Board of Trustees.

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After becoming a State Farm agent, Calloway said he had concerns a Black person couldn't sell insurance to white people. But he became one of the state's top agents and the top Black agent in the state for several years.

"Part of my mission has been to let people know that if you got your stuff together, if you hold yourself like you're supposed to, and if you back up the product with the company you recommend, people don't care what color you are when it comes down to that," he said.

"The good thing I found out in this business is we have a good town," Calloway said of Evansville.

Susan Hardwick

Hardwick is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of American Water, the largest publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater utility company.

She joined the company in 2019 after a lengthy career with Vectren Corp. prior to its acquisition by CenterPoint Energy.

While at Vectren, Hardwick was a member of the executive leadership team responsible for development and execution of business and financial strategy for both the regulated utility businesses as well as the market-based subsidiaries.

She led the development and execution of the company’s regulatory strategy and investor relations and was responsible for numerous financing transactions, including a total of over $2 billion in long-term debt financing. 

And, Hardwick led the execution of the agreement with CenterPoint Energy for the sale of Vectren for $8.5 billion.

Hardwick served in leadership positions on a variety of community boards, including St. Mary’s Medical Center, Fifth Third Bank (Southern Indiana), Evansville Museum, Evansville Celebration of Diversity Distinguished Lecture Series, Gilda’s Club of Evansville and Richard G. Lugar Excellence in Public Service Series, among many others.

Appointed by the governor, Hardwick also served two terms as an Arts Commissioner for the State of Indiana. She received the Athena Award in 2009 from the Chamber of Commerce of Southwestern Indiana, the Sara B. Davies Leadership Award in 2016 presented by Leadership Evansville and the Torchbearer Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 presented by the Indiana Commission on Women.

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Hardwick grew up intending to become an accountant, but about five years after graduating from Indiana University and taking a position at a large accounting firm in Indianapolis, she noticed how few women were in management roles.

She was determined to move up the ranks, and she did.

"My view is, I think there is too much emphasis on goal-setting," Hardwick told the Courier & Press in 2014. "Whatever I'm doing right now, I'm going to do the best I can do."

Willard Carpenter

A titan in local real estate, Carpenter received little formal education but was gifted with natural intelligence, especially when it came to money.

He made the bulk of his fortune through real estate and partnering with others in non-real estate ventures. Real estate remained Carpenter’s lifelong passion, and at his death, the Evansville Courier called him “the born king of real estate speculators.”

Carpenter first came to Evansville as a dry goods merchant with Carpenter Bros. and owned interest in multiple real estate and business ventures.

He was best known for his building and real estate business, Willard Carpenter and Son, Builders and Real Estate.

Carpenter also was an Evansville City Council member, a Vanderburgh County commissioner and an Indiana state representative.

In 1846, he was elected to the board of the Evansville Branch of the State Bank of Indiana (later to become Old National Bank). He gave both money and property to charitable causes.  A gift of land from Mr. Carpenter precipitated the construction of the Vanderburgh County Christian Home that served as a shelter for women and children, particularly as a refuge for unwed mothers during their pregnancies, until 1985.

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But his crowning civic achievement would be the establishment of a public library. Willard Library was opened to the public on March 28, 1885, and is today the oldest public library building in the state.

While Carpenter would not live to see his dream come to fruition, he left instructions for how his library was to be, and it fit his staunch abolitionist views — it was to be open to all people “regardless of age, race, class or gender.”

Walter Koch

Born in Evansville in 1904, Koch worked part-time as an office boy at International Steel while attending Central High School. Staying with the company after graduating, he worked his way up to chairman of the board.

Due in large part to his efforts, International Steel moved up to seventh place among the nation’s steel fabricators. In 1922, Koch met with the late Mayor William Dress with a plan to plunge millions of dollars into a shipyard to build ocean vessels in Evansville.

The U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships had already approved the project, and contractors were ready to accept Evansville as the site. Because of Koch's tenacity, the shipyard became Evansville’s biggest wartime employer providing nearly 20,000 jobs around the clock.

Koch was engaged in the Evansville community and beyond, through service on boards including Evansville Air Board, Community Fund Campaign, Rotary Club of Evansville, Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Company, Early American Life Insurance Company, Indiana Toll Bridge Commission and National Association of Manufacturers.

Koch won the Rotary Civic Award for community achievement in 1947. He persuaded an Indianapolis philanthropist to give nearly $500,000 to the University of Evansville to help fund a building campaign and was instrumental in convincing Herman Krannert to make a donation to UE, for which Krannert's name is on the university's fine arts building.

Koch was on the UE Board of Trustees for many years, and perhaps his greatest accomplishment was serving as the leader called on to attract the War Industries to Evansville. It became the largest economic boom in the history of the area at that time, bringing the city out of the Great Depression with 20,000 new jobs.

The products produced include the newly designed LST, vessels credited with being instrumental in the allies' victory on D-Day.

Evansville boasts the sole remaining LST, moored on its Downtown riverfront.