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Alumni > Jim Livesay Service Awards > William Jeanes - 2010 Livesay Winner

William Jeanes - 2010 Livesay Winner

For more than three decades, William Jeanes has been a major figure in automotive journalism. He began as a freelancer in the 1970's, became a staff writer at Car and Driver, and after a ten-year career in the advertising agency business, he accepted the position of editor-in-chief at Car and Driver. Under his leadership, the magazine became the largest automotive publication on the planet. In 1993, he became a senior vice president and group publisher at Hachett Magazines and was made publisher of both Car and Driver and Road & Track as well as a handful of smaller magazines. An unsuccessful attempt at semi-retirement in the late 1990's saw him become founding editor of two more automotive magazines, Classic Automobile Register and AMI Auto World Weekly. His advertising career saw him serve as a senior vice president at two major agencies, SSC&B:Lintas and J. Walter Thompson. At JWT, he was director of the Ford Division account.

A 1959 graduate of Millsaps College, his undergraduate activities included membership in Pi Kappa Alpha, work with the Millsaps Players and one season of varsity baseball. His grade point index closely reflected what was then known as the All Men's Average. In 1992, he was named the Millsaps College Alumnus of the Year and was named to the Board of Trustees two years later. In 2008 he became a Life Trustee. He served as adjunct professor of English at Millsaps in 1983 and in 2005 was writer-in-residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He has lectured at the University of Tennessee School of Business, the University of Michigan Engineering School, the University of Mississippi and the University of Texas. In 2008 he presented his lecture "Mississippi's Combat Airmen of World War I" as a part of the Millsaps Arts & Lecture series.

His writing has been published in a score of the world's automotive publications as well as in such diverse venues as Sports Illustrated, Parade, Playboy, American Heritage, Consumer Digest, the New York Times and AARP The Magazine. His scholarly writing and reviews have been published in the Journal of Mississippi History; War, Literature and the Arts; The Journal of World War I Aviation Historians, and others.

He served forty-three months on active duty with the United States Navy, mostly aboard the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. He became Senior Watch Officer on the Intrepid and left the service with the rank of Lieutenant.

Today he lives in Ridgeland, Mississippi, with his wife, Susan, and two demanding cats. He is currently an editor-at-large at American On Line Autos ad serves on the board of the Eudora Welty Foundation.