ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Benedictine Military School has extensive connection with Hancock Askew & Co.

Benedictine Military School has alumni working at businesses throughout the country, including a concentration of alumni working at many businesses in Savannah. One such company is Hancock Askew & Co., an accounting firm that offers a full range of tax, accounting, and consulting services for businesses ranging from family-owned start-ups to international concerns.

“Today, we have eight partners in Savannah and five of them are BC graduates,” said Hancock Askew Managing Partner Michael McCarthy, a 1987 Benedictine graduate. “We have two women partners. They happen to both be married to BC graduates.”

McCarthy paused a second before playfully adding, “And I’ve got one guy that went to Savannah Christian. You know, he’s pretty good, too. He’s a good guy. So, it’s not a rule. You don’t have to have gone to BC to become a partner here. I have partners in other offices who didn’t go to BC and they are great people, too. But out of our 70 people that work in our Savannah office, 10 percent went to BC. It’s a high population here in our Savannah office.”

Harry Haslam, Jr., Benedictine Class of 1969, was the managing partner at Hancock Askew from 1986-2011. He hired McCarthy as well as Benedictine graduates Billy Griffin ’80, Michael Rundbaken ’90, Stephen Leonard 2001, Steven Doan ’01, Shane Murray ’03, and Samuel Evans ’03. Haslam even hired his father, Harry, Sr., BC Class of 1941. Four generations of Haslam’s family have attended Benedictine.

“Billy Griffin was the first BC graduate I hired. I hired all of them, including my father,” said Haslam, who started at Hancock Askew in 1973 and retired in 2017. “Dad worked for a competitor and when he retired, he couldn’t stand retirement, so then he came to work with us.”

Haslam earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting from the University of Georgia in 1973 and joined Hancock Askew upon honorable discharge as a second lieutenant from the United States Army, Finance Corp. He was admitted as a Hancock Askew partner in 1981.
 

Haslam said hiring Benedictine graduates was an easy decision.

“When I interviewed somebody, if they were a BC graduate, they would get an offer,” he said. “We’ve never had a bad hire coming out of BC. There’s a lot of luck involved. I got real lucky with the ones I hired out of BC.”

Haslam said he hired Benedictine graduates because of the solid foundation they received at BC.

“By the time you get out of BC you’ve got embedded in you that Benedictine spirituality and discipline,” he said. “And JROTC brings discipline on top of the Benedictine charisma. And so, you have kind of a lifetime mold that you follow. All these young men followed that path.”

How Haslam hired McCarthy is one of those many epic BC stories you hear within the BC brotherhood.

“Mike was working in Atlanta at E&Y, Ernst and Young,” Haslam said. “He called me on St. Patrick’s Day afternoon. By happenstance, I had gone to the parade. I had gone back to the office that afternoon just to try and catch up on some things, and the phone rang. I answered it and it was a guy named Mike McCarthy in Atlanta, who’s originally from Savannah, who’s a BC graduate. It took a few conversations, but we worked out a deal and he’s been a major superstar since.”

McCarthy vividly remembers nervously making that cold call to Haslam.

“I was working for a big accounting firm up in Atlanta,” he said. “I guess it was 2002 when BC was doing the century, the 100-year campaign. (Former BC Director of Advancement) Greg Markiton (’92) and some of the faculty from BC came to Atlanta and had a big event. It was a fundraising thing. We were all talking, and I said something about ‘Well, at some point I’ll move back to Savannah.’ And I think it was Greg Markiton who said, ‘Well, when you do, call Harry Haslam. He’s our accountant at Hancock Askew. I’m sure he can help you find a job.’ I just sort of stuck that in the back of my mind. I had never met (Haslam).

“Two years later, when I decided to change jobs in 2004, I did call him,” McCarthy continued. “I was like, ‘Hey, you don’t know me but I’m from Savannah. I went to BC. I know you went to BC. I work for an accounting firm. You work for an accounting firm. Could we talk about jobs and have lunch?’ He was like, ‘Absolutely. Come on, let’s have lunch.’ So, I had lunch with him, and he made me a job offer. The BC connection got me my job.”

Said Haslam, “Well, first and foremost, he’s a BC graduate. He had an excellent resume. His work experience is excellent. His wife, Kathleen (Bradley McCarthy), is a St. Vincent’s graduate. They wanted to move to Savannah for the right reasons. You know, every once in a while, things just fall into your lap. He’s a very focused and impressive young man. It was a 10-year process for me (to select a managing partner successor). I had my eyes on some other folks when we hired him and as he progressed, he started rising to the top.”

McCarthy recently extended job offers to Benedictine graduates Brendan Coleman ’20 and Owen Winckler ’21.

“We made two job offers to two people who are currently in college, Owen Winckler and Brendan Coleman, who will come work for us,” he said. “They interned with us and went back to school after their internship. But they have job offers to start after graduation. They’re going to be working for us soon.”

McCarthy, just as Haslam did, finds comfort in hiring Benedictine graduates because of their reliability.

“When we hire people there are three things, you hire people for lots of reasons, but there are three things that I look for in a resume,” he said. “One, is I’ve always hired every Eagle Scout who has applied because I figure if you’re willing to work that hard as a teenager, you’re a hard worker. (Two), I’ve hired everybody with military experience that has applied because my thought is if you went to college, got your accounting degree and then joined the military that’s pretty impressive. Or if you joined the military and then went to college to get your accounting degree that’s pretty impressive. Generally, those folks know how to think logically and follow orders, and they’ve worked out. And the third thing is the BC graduate because of the discipline, because of the way that they were taught to approach things. I’ve hired every one that has applied, and it has always worked out.”

McCarthy said the BC connection creates opportunities throughout Savannah.

“It’s good connections,” he said. “Even getting clients around town and meeting people around town there’s that connection. You see people and they’re like ‘What class were you?’ It opens a lot of doors and people answer the phone. The other thing, for me, no matter what I need in town – I need a doctor, a lawyer, somebody to cut down a tree, a plumber, anything I need – there’s somebody that I know who was in the class above me or a couple of the classes below me that’s in that business. It opens a lot of doors. And that’s helpful in a business like mine when you’re working with lots of businesses around town. You make a lot of connections. And that’s really, really helpful.”

Benedictine’s impact on McCarthy was profound. He credits BC with a great deal of his success.

“The interesting thing for me is the teachers at Benedictine at that time had very high expectations and they also encouraged you,” he said. “They said, ‘You come from here, you can get into school wherever you want. You get good grades; you can do whatever you want.’ I come from a family where I’m the first person to go to college. My father and mother don’t have college degrees, nor did my grandparents. I’m from a large Irish-Catholic family where hard work, blue-collar work, was what was done. But I’m the first one in my family to go. Because of the teachers at BC saying, ‘You can absolutely go (to college). In fact, you should go. You’ve got good grades. You’re in the National Honor Society. You absolutely need to go,’ it really helps somebody open their eyes and say, ‘Wow, I have these opportunities.’ Part of it is just the encouragement and the environment. I have friends that went to other high schools and in some of those schools less than 50 percent of the kids go to college. They just don’t have the same level of expectation. I don’t know what the statistics are at Benedictine from my class, but I would guess that out of the 95 guys in my senior class, I would guess 94 or 95 of them went to college. I don’t know the number, but I’m sure it was a high number that went to the next level of school.

“I’m not saying that college is for everyone, but that expectation that you can achieve whatever you want was just instilled in me,” McCarthy continued. “And then the discipline and hard work. I’ve had teachers that encouraged me to take physics, to take AP Calculus, and to do those things. That didn’t happen at other schools. The teachers didn’t push you. We were pushed and I think that makes a difference. I pushed for things later in life. Is it because those guys set a good example for me? I don’t know. But it’s a really good education and it’s an aspiring education. It’s more than just reading, writing, and math. I remember Fr. Ronald (Gatman, O.S.B.) taught religions of the world when I was a senior. One week we would study Catholic vs. Hindu. The next week it was Catholic vs. Buddhism. The next week it’s Catholic vs., well, not versus but how do we differ? What do we believe and what do all these other religions believe? And it wasn’t negative. It was ‘You need to know what’s out in the world.’ It was one of my favorite classes.”

Before joining Hancock Askew, McCarthy spent 13 years with Ernst & Young and two years with Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Auburn University and is licensed to practice accounting in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. McCarthy has coordinated audits for SEC registrants and privately held companies, including several Fortune 1,000 companies. His services include providing managed accounting and reporting for public equity and debt offerings, business combinations and dispositions, advising internal audit departments on plans and strategies to enhance corporate governance.

“BC taught you to do the hard thing and work it well,” McCarthy said. “It was a great foundation. I know when I got to college, I had a great foundation for what I needed to do. Just the discipline and hard work, and even more than that, the high expectations. You can do it if you try. Whether that was in sports or in the classroom.”