Former Mississippi State University president Donald Zacharias passed away Sunday at the age of 77 due to complications from multiple sclerosis, leaving behind a legacy of compassion, leadership and devotion to MSU that far surpasses his 12 and a half years as president of the university.
Zacharias served as 15th president of MSU from 1985 to 1997 when he came to Starkville after serving as president at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky.
Zacharias laid the foundation for growth in MSU’s enrollment, private contributions, research and athletic achievement as part of his legacy.
Zacharias worked toward construction of the Joe Frank Sanderson Center and Mitchell Memorial Library as well as achieving the highest enrollment in the state.
In a news release, current MSU president Mark Keenum said Zacharias’s leadership made changes at the university that will have a lasting effect on its future.
“Dr. Donald Zacharias was a transformative figure at Mississippi State University,” he said. “He really helped bring MSU into the modern era, and he did so by developing a broad vision for the leadership that Mississippi needed from a land grant university.
Keenum said Zacharias was a friend as well as a man dedicated to MSU and higher education in Mississippi.
“At our last visit during the Christmas holidays, Dr. Zacharias was still providing valuable, thoughtful counsel to me and still had the welfare of MSU students at the top of his mind,” he said. “I counted him as a friend, a mentor and an inspiration. Don Zacharias was a man of great courage and dignity, and he was one of the most influential leaders in the history of Mississippi higher education.”
In the midst of his death, those in the MSU community express their sadness at the passing of an influential figure in the university and the state’s history as well as remember the profound impact Zacharias had on them personally.
Sid Salter, director of university relations at MSU, said Zacharias had a tremendous impact on his professional and personal life.
Salter said Zacharias was a wonderful friend to him and his family, including his late wife, who also suffered from multiple sclerosis.
“He was particularly compassionate to her and took a great interest in our family and how the illness affected the family,” he said.
Salter also said after his father’s death when he was 30, he looked to Zacharias for wisdom.
“When I needed council on some things, when I needed an opinion that I valued, he was one of the people that I counted on,” he said.
The transformative influence Zacharias had on MSU is one of the things, Salter said, that made him a great leader and visionary.
“I think about the university as it was before he came and how it was after he left and its just a remarkable difference,” he said.
Particularly, Salter said Zacharias strove to further MSU’s art and science departments, as well as its library and managed to do so while still recognizing the land grant university tradition.
“He pushed very hard for the non-agriculture side of the university to get its due and to move forward as a comprehensive university,” he said. “I think that’s also part of the legacy.”
Maridith Geuder, former MSU head of university relations, said she shared the field of communication with Zacharias and attributes his great leadership to his powerful communication skills.
“He was, I think, one of the best communicators I have ever had the privilege of knowing,” she said. “When he spoke, people listened.”
She said Zacharias gained respect through his ability to communicate his vision for MSU’s growth and success.
“He had a presence about him that demanded respect and he spoke in a voice that – he was trained as a broadcasting voice – so people would stop and listen when he spoke,” she said. “He was very much an encourager, he was very much focused on his aspirations for the university, he wanted Mississippi State to grow in stature and in respect and he did a lot to ensure that that happened.”
Geuder said even after he retired, Zacharias continued to be a role model to her and play an active role in the university and her professional life by keeping in touch with her via email, often sending her suggestions.
“I think he became a role model for grace and for leadership…He was almost a legend in his own time, people aspired to be like Dr. Zacharias in terms of their ability to make a difference,” she said. “I knew him as part of a team and he and Mrs. Zacharias were very much a team, and they were a team that represented Mississippi State at the highest caliber of professionalism and class.”
Carol Mason Schrader met with Zacharias weekly while she served as editor in chief of The Reflector from 1989 to 1990.
“His office had called and wanted me to be there every week, and I really didn’t know what to expect. Every single week I left feeling like I was a lot more important than I really was,” she said. “He gave me the impression that the time he spent with me was absolutely the most important part of the day.”
Schrader said Zacharias created opportunities for her and encouraged her.
“He opened doors for me constantly that year. He would call and say, ‘I’ve got a spot for you on the university plane. I want you at the Board of Higher Education with me this week,’ and I would rearrange my schedule to get on that plane,” she said.
Schrader said she was not the only student who saw that Zacharias believed in MSU.
She said at one point, students heard he had been offered a job elsewhere and staged a rally to show their appreciation for Zacharias and to ask him to stay at MSU. 
“We held a huge rally in the middle of the Drill Field, ‘We Back Zach,’ kind of ‘we want you here,’ and he stayed. He believed in us as a university and that was exactly how you felt when you were in his presence, but he really thought I was all that. You’re a college undergrad and you’re still trying to decide what your future looks like and I would leave his office thinking, ‘Wow, my future is pretty amazing,’ because he believed in me, and that’s how he felt about State,” she said. “He believed in Mississippi State. I still think we are a wonderful university because of Donald Zacharias. Sunday was a pretty sad day for us.”
Schrader recalled a moment when Zacharias showed that belief in her, when her senior year the library caught on fire and Zacharias allowed her exclusive access when she showed up to cover the story
“All the newspapers were there – the Clarion Ledger had sent somebody up, the Starkville Daily News had sent somebody there and Dr. Zacharias and Dr. Roy Ruby forbid any of the reporters to go in, and I had been standing outside and they made a beeline for me and opened the doors for me and my photographer to go in and get the exclusive story,” she said.
Cory Collins, Student Association president from 1994 to 1995, said he remembers Zacharias as an influential leader who valued the thoughts and opinions of the student body.
“I feel like we had a great personal and professional relationship when I was in student government. He definitely took the time to get to know each student he interacted with and really wanted and valued our opinions,” he said. “Specifically, I remember when I had been working on the campus shuttle project and we were trying to push that through administration for the school to evaluate it. He said, ‘what do you need?’ and we said, ‘we need to go to some campuses that have a system and meet with them and see how their system works and go to a campus the size like ours,’ and he helped me put together a team of university administrators and students to go to campuses to study it and fully supported it the whole way through. He did not brush it off as a wild college students’ dream or suggestion, and then it wound up happening.”
Overwhelmingly, the response from the those who knew Zacharias was that he was a kind-hearted, passionate man who cared genuinely for MSU, the students and the faculty he built relationships with during his presidency.
Jimmy Abraham, executive director of the MSU Alumni Association, said in an email Zacharias’s shining personality made him a superb president.   
“Dr. Zacharias was an outstanding president, and an ever better person.  He was a master communicator, and could relate to anyone,” he said. “He especially enjoyed interacting with students, and many times during the lunch hour while President, Dr. Zacharias would go to the cafeteria and visit informally with them from table to table. Those students are now alumni, and they, like everyone in the MSU family, have not forgotten nor will ever forget his caring spirit and all he did for our beloved university.”
Thomas Carskadon, professor of psychology and long-time friend of Zacharias, said in an email although he will remember Zacharias for his intelligence and outstanding contribution to MSU, he will remember his good heart the most.
“I remember when my deceased wife was about to receive her long sought, hard earned Ph.D., she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Instead of walking across the stage that bittersweet graduation day, she lay in recovery from surgery at the Mayo Clinic. Not only did President Zacharias send flowers and a kind note, but he even sent a videotape of the graduation ceremony where her name was read out and our son Gordon walked for her. She passed away a few months later, but that act of kindness meant the world to her and her family,” he said. “Dr. Zacharias did things like that all the time.”
 Salter said even in his illness, Zacharias was always positive and never dwelled on his aches and pains. He said he wanted to talk about the world around him and the accomplishments of the students at MSU.
He said he thinks Zacharias will be remembered as one of the greatest presidents of MSU and one of the most influential voices of higher education in Mississippi history.
To sum up Zacharias’s character and leadership at the university, Salter recalled attending a basketball game in 1996 in which MSU won over Yukon to advance to the Final Four.
“As we got ready to leave, he asked if he could hold onto my arm going up the steps of that arena,” he said. Salter said that moment was the first time he realized the extent of Zacharias’s physical problems. 
“As soon as he took my arm I knew it was probably something like MS if not MS,” he said. “He kinda smiled and he said, ‘Just let me hold on and keep walking, and we’ll keep walking together and we’ll get there together.”
Salter said Zacharias believed much more could be accomplished together than in cliques or in groups divided, so he strove to exemplify that in his presidency.
“That sort of epitomized his leadership at the university. He wanted us to all walk together and get there together, and I think he left a lot of that spark in almost everyone he touched.”
A public memorial service will be held Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Foster Ballroom of the Colvard Student Union.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant ordered flags on MSU’s campus be lowered to half-staff through Thursday at sunset in honor of Zacharias.