Regent adds Southeast to his list of civic activity

A member of many boards from community and university foundations to hospitals, Don LaFerla of Carthage, Mo., is well acquainted with community involvement. He's been honored to serve on all the panels, but he finds his latest quite humbling -- a seat on the Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents.

A 1961 alumni of Southeast Missouri State College -- forerunner of Southeast Missouri State University, LaFerla was appointed to replace Brad Bedell of Sikeston, Mo., whose term expired Jan. 1, 2013. Bedell stayed on as a regent while the board awaited a gubernatorial appointment, according to a Dec. 13 Southeast news release.

LaFerla's term runs through Jan. 1, 2019, the release said. In his biography, he said his interest and involvement in "our state's education and health care organizations over the years" prompted him to apply for the regent's position.

A retired corporate officer who has worked for Emerson Electric Co. and McDonnell Douglas, both in St. Louis, and Carthage-based Leggett and Platt Inc., LaFerla completed a bachelor's degree from Southeast with a double major in biology and geology in 1961. He followed up with night classes at Saint Louis University-Metropolitan College, where he earned a certificate in systems analysis and data processing.

He then began working on a master of science degree in engineering administration at the University of Missouri-Rolla, St. Louis campus, in 1970. He completed nearly all the requirements before joining Leggett and Platt in October 1973. He worked his way through six higher-level positions before retiring in April 2001, the release said.

Receiving Southeast's Alumni Merit Award in 1998 -- on his birthday -- got him in more regular contact with Southeast.

"That's where my wife and I met," LaFerla said in a phone interview Sunday. "We owe a lot to Southeast. It's an honor to be ... selected and serve on the board of regents."

LaFerla's first regents meeting was Dec. 18, but he spent the previous day reading about what the regents had done in 2012. On meeting day, he had three hours of orientation at the university, spent about an hour with Southeast president Kenneth Dobbins and participated in the 1:30 p.m. board meeting. He was sworn in by U.S. District Court Judge Steven Limbaugh Jr.

"I had met some of them [the regents] at various functions," LaFerla said. "They kind of welcomed me to the fold. ... It's kind of humbling when you look at [it] and you realize the responsibility those six people have for the university."

In the release about the appointment, Dobbins thanked Bedell for his service, which ran from 2001 to 2013, and said he was pleased LaFerla had been named to the board.

"He is an alumnus of Southeast and has always been very supportive of our university. We look forward to working with him in his role as regent," Dobbins said in the release.

Married since June 1961, the LaFerlas have two sons, Jeffrey and Michael, and three grandchildren. LaFerla's wife, Gloria, attended College High School, located where the nursing school is now behind Academic Hall, through her junior year. She graduated from Fox High School in Arnold, Mo., where her father taught. Gloria went to Southeast for a year, finishing her degree at St. Louis Community College in Florissant Valley. She worked for the majority of her career for IBM, for a year or so at McDonnell Douglas Automation Co. in St. Louis, and ultimately retired from IBM.

The LaFerla's son, Jeffrey and his wife, Joni, are optometrists in Kansas City, Mo. Their two sons are 16-year-old Peyton and 14-year-old Cameron.

Michael, a board-certified orthodontist in Joplin, Mo., and his wife, Bre, have a 6 1/2-year-old daughter named Jadyn.

Through the years, LaFerla has been on the Mercy McCune-Brooks hospital board as an officer and member; a member and officer on the McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation Board; a Southeast Missouri University Foundation board member; Missouri Southern State University Foundation board president; Missouri Hospital Association board member; Carthage Community Foundation president; Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri vice president; and Carthage Chamber of Commerce president.

"I seem to be asked to be on these things and sometimes I have a hard time saying 'no'," LaFerla said. But his answer when people who ask why he's so involved is "somebody's got to do it."

rcampbell@semissourian.com

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