For More Info...Ralph W. Adams (1915-1998)

Dr. Adams served as the President, then Chancellor, of the Troy State University System, 1964-1989.

He was born in Samson, AL, earned his bachelors degree from Birmingham-Southern College and his law degree from the University of Alabama (1940) where he was a roommate of future Alabama governor George Wallace. Later he received his LL.D (1965) and his J.D. (1969, an did post-graduate study at University of Colorado, George Washington University, Princeton, and Harvard. He practiced law in Tuscaloosa, joined the US Army Air Forces during World War 2, then returned to become a judge in Tuscaloosa, 1946-1947.

Adams left active military service in 1964 and remained in the Air Force Reserve and Alabama Air National Guard, retiring as a major general in 1975.

He served in many community and business positions: acting dean of Air University Law School, director of Alabama's Selective Service System, first president of the Mid-South Athletic Conference (became the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference), chair of Alabama's State Personnel Board, State Insurance Board, State Oil and Gas Board, and served on the boards of Lyman Ward Military Academy, Farmers and Merchant National Bank in Troy, Southern Bank in Montgomery and the American Educators Life Insurance Company. He was a state commander in the American Legion and a leader in the Alabama-Florida Boy Scout Council.

RALPH W. ADAMS HALL

Ralph W. Adams Hall was the second building completed on the Troy Univeristy Dothan Campus. A 4-story structure, it housed classrooms, the library, the bookstore, the mailroom, the cafe, and multiple academic divisions.

The Troy State University Board of Trustees named this building on the then-under-construction Troy State University Dothan campus for Adams in 1989.