Jordan "Jerry"
Reese IIIt
Calling Jordan “Jerry” Reese III a pillar of the community is a little tongue-in-cheek. As founder and president of Bo-Mac Contractors, Ltd., he’s done a great deal to “support” industry – generally with pilings driven 60 to 80 feet into the ground.
His support for the community is just as strong. As a business leader who plays an active role in the community, Reese has served on a plethora of boards and community organizations that contribute much to what is good in Southeast Texas.
While driving pilings out of sight is a cornerstone service of Bo-Mac today, Reese’s first business venture was more apt to catch the eye. A student at Lamar from 1961 to 1966, Reese became a good friend and business partner with Randy Best ’67 and fellow Cardinal Larry Thomas. Together, they founded Collegiate Diamonds of America, an endeavor selling engagement rings at a time when about 28 percent of all college students got engaged or married each year.
“We had a lot of fun with the customers,” Reese said. “All of them were excited because they were getting married. It wasn’t easy to compete with the jewelry stores, but we’d hear about who was getting engaged and getting married, and we’d offer them a quality product at a good value.”
It wasn’t business but basketball that first brought Reese to Lamar. Having played as point guard at Beaumont High School, Reese was a walk on for the Lamar team when Billy Tubbs was freshman coach under Jack Martin. But, he didn’t stay that year and instead attended Southern Methodist University for a semester.“I ran into Tubbs at Tyrrell Park the next summer, and he said, ‘Why don’t you come on back out?,’” Reese said. He joined the bench at practice, but, after a couple of months, announced his decision to quit playing ball for good.
“I can remember to this day Coach Martin saying ’Jerry, you think you don’t want to play now, but you’re going to regret it.’ He was 100 percent right,” Reese said, laughing. “I wish I could have stayed, but we were having so much fun with the business things we were doing, and those practices that Billy Tubbs put on weren’t the easiest things in the world.”
Basketball may have drawn Reese to Lamar, but it was the friendships and the college environment that made the deal stick. A member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, Reese relished getting to know students from around the region and the state. Life in then-new Plummer Hall was never boring for the young business major with a penchant for creating new opportunities.
While still a full-time student and business partner in Collegiate Diamonds, Reese also operated a flight school at the Beaumont Municipal Airport. Having gained a love of flying from local instructor Jim George, Reese was very interested in the offer that came when his mentor was ready to move into a less demanding role. George invited Reese to buy Neches Aviation in 1963, and he did, managing the business until he sold it in 1965.
It was a more down-to-earth business that Reese landed after graduation. He grew up around the construction business and worked in his father’s equipment shop from age 14, so it might have seemed a natural that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. But, during his last two years of college, his father’s failing health brought an end to the family business.
After graduating with a B.B.A. in economics, and selling Neches Aviation, Reese formed Bo-Mac Contractors in 1966 with two of his father’s former associates.
“We started out in the oil field construction business doing board roads and rig-ups,” Reese said. Through the decades, the business evolved, expanding its construction services in 1974 to provide pile-driving and civil construction for the oil-and gas-refining and petrochemical industries.
In 1985, Bo-Mac broadened its construction services to include asphalt manufacture and paving for the Texas Department of Transportation (Reese sold that portion of the business two years ago). The company’s expansion continued in 1989 with the addition of its marine division, providing marine piling and the construction of dock facilities from New Orleans to Corpus Christi.
“The hardest thing I’ve had to do is make the transition from the oil field to the petrochemical industry,” Reese said of the change, with its steep learning curve in a dynamic environment. “I had a lot of good people, and that is what made the move possible.”
Today, Bo-Mac continues its growth with an expanded customer base and large geographic service area, an approach that provides resiliency in the business cycle. “When the petrochemical industry is down, we’re down, but we have flexibility with work in the power industry and some municipal work,” Reese said. “We have a variety of things we can do and the ability to transition into other areas. But the basis of our business remains petrochemical.”
While most Bo-Mac projects are “inside the fence” at the region’s petrochemical plants, some publicly visible recent projects are the new wharf at the Port of Beaumont, a new dock facility for ATOFINA in Port Arthur and another for Trans-Global Solutions in Houston.
While Reese’s support for southeast Texas has been literal – from ports to pilings – it is also largely outside the public eye. So, too, is his support for the community where he is often behind-the-scenes, quietly helping make good things happen. Take, for example, his role on the board of the Lamar University Foundation, where he has served as president and helped endowments grow to support scholarships and scholarly activity at his alma mater.
“This area has been awfully good to me, and, like most people, I hope I can give something back,” Reese said. That desire is fulfilled through his active involvement in activities that help develop the area, including service on boards of the Beaumont Chamber of Commerce, St.Elizabeth Hospital and Art Museum of Southeast Texas, also serving as an elder at St.Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.
“I think Lamar’s alumni are the most untapped alumni in the United States,” Reese said. “We have some tremendous resources out there, and I think it’s going to be mind boggling whenever we get a capital campaign going.”
Reese met his bride, Sheila Janelle (O’Hara) Reese, at Beaumont High School. At Lamar, she was active in the Delta Zeta Sorority and was Homecoming Queen. She graduated in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in secondary education and taught a year at Nederland High School. An active supporter of Lamar University and the community, she has filled vital roles in education and the arts, including service with parent-teacher associations and on boards for the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Lamar University Friends of the Arts and the Symphony of Southeast Texas.
Jerry and Sheila have three grown children, daughters Rachel Lawrence and Stacey Henningsen, both of Houston, and son Jordan Reese IV of Beaumont. At 59, Jerry is glad to be spending more time with his eight grandchildren, ranging in age from 8 months to 11 years.
His commitment to the success of his community is genuine, and his brand of citizenship – interest, vision and action – is what separates a thriving community from a ghost town. He knows from experience that if a community is to grow, it must first have a solid foundation. With deliberation, Jerry Reese has been making certain it’s rock-solid in Southeast Texas.
