Office of University Communications 

Tom Strong to receive Bronze Bear Award

SPRINGFIELD — Missouri State University alumnus and nationally-known attorney Thomas G. Strong has been selected to receive the Bronze Bear Award. Strong, founder and managing partner of The Strong Law Firm, will be the seventh recipient of the award, which is presented to those who have exhibited “extraordinary achievement and/or outstanding support” for Missouri State. 

The Missouri State University Board of Governors voted today (Oct. 27) to award Strong the Bronze Bear, which will be presented at the Dec. 15 commencement ceremony at Hammons Student Center. The Bronze Bear Award includes a framed resolution and a 45-pound, 18-inch Bronze Bear in an upright position mounted on a base. The Bronze Bear Award was designed by former Missouri State art professor Dr. Jim Hill. A 14-foot statue version of the Bronze Bear mounted on a 3-foot concrete base is located just north of Missouri State’s Plaster Student Union.

“Missouri State is honored to count Tom Strong among our alumni and friends,” said Missouri State President Michael T. Nietzel. “Tom has served this university extraordinarily well in many capacities – with both his time and financial support. I’m very pleased that we can recognize Tom in this manner.”

Strong is a 1952 graduate of Missouri State. He is immediate past president of the Missouri State University Foundation Board of Directors and past president of the Alumni Association. Strong, along with Bill Darr, served as co-chair for the university’s first comprehensive fund-raising campaign in 2004-05 – The Campaign for SMS: Imagine the Possibilities – which raised more than $50 million dollars for the university. He served on the Missouri State Board of Governors from 1993-99 and held a one-year term as president. Strong was honored with the Missouri State University Alumni Association’s Outstanding Alumni award in 1987 and he is a past president and charter member of the Papa Bears Booster Club.

Tom and Wilma Strong and their children, Stephanie Strong Mitchell, John T. Strong and David K. Strong, pledged $3 million dollars in 2002 to endow two faculty chairs in religious studies and public affairs and to fund an endowed graduate scholarship fund in the College of Humanities and Public Affairs. In honor of this gift to the university, the Public Affairs Classroom Building was renamed Strong Hall.

Strong has practiced law in Springfield since 1957. In 1976, he founded The Strong Law Firm, P.C. Strong has served as president of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, the Missouri Board of Law Examiners and the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association. He has been a governor of the American Trial Lawyers Association, a member of the Missouri Appellate Judicial Commission, and has served as chairman and committee member of many Missouri Bar Association committees.

The Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers recently honored Strong by establishing the Thomas G. Strong Trial Attorney Award. According to association President Thomas L. Stewart, the award will be presented annually to the trial attorney “who most closely exhibits all attributes by which we have come to know Mr. Strong: skill in the courtroom; integrity in one’s professional and personal dealings; compassion for the underdog and respect for the courts and opposing counsel.”

The first six Bronze Bear recipients were John Q. Hammons, international developer and philanthropist, in 1998; David D. Glass, former president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., of Bentonville, Ark., and owner of the Kansas City Royals baseball team, in 1999; Dr. Duane G. Meyer, president emeritus of Missouri State, in 2000; Virginia and William H. “Bill” Darr, founder and owner of American Dehydrated Foods and related companies, and Springfield philanthropists, in 2003; Jane and Ken Meyer, owners of Meyer Communications, Inc., and Springfield philanthropists, in 2004; and Dr. John H. Keiser, president emeritus of Missouri State, in 2005.