Rick Bean (’81) and Julie Bean (’84)
2024 Alumni Award Winner – The Sweetheart Award
We met in January of 1981, a month after I had finished my degree at Georgia Southern. Julie was in the nursing program at Armstrong, I was working as a software developer in Savannah. She finished her degree in June of 1984 and took a position with Candler Hospital until she retired in 2022. We were married in Savannah in 1983. I retired from Inventure IT at the end of 2022.
Though we didn’t meet in Statesboro, it is central to many activities for our family. Both of our sons graduated from GS. Matt finished in 2010 with a BBA in Management and Scott finished his undergrad in Construction Management in 2011 and then received his Masters from the college of Business in 2018. Scott was also a 40 under 40 honoree in the first class of 2014.
Rick MC’d the Savannah-Chatham Eagle Club lunches for over 20 years with the assistance of many great alumni and staff from Southern. With Julie and her father Bill Butler, our family started a nursing scholarship in honor of her mother, Gwen Kicklighter Butler in 2011 with the help of Ryan Chambers and Jean Bartels.
We hold season tickets for football, basketball and baseball, but baseball is by far our favorite sport. We have witnessed the growth of the university for over 40 years and love to meet with our Eagle family at games and other events.