Local businessman, former Auburn trustee Michael McCartney dies at 88

Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Gadsden First United Methodist Church for local businessman and former Auburn University Board of Trustees member Michael McCartney, who died Monday at age 88.

The family will receive visitors from noon until the service time at the church. Burial will follow in Forrest Cemetery.

A Gadsden native, McCartney graduated in 1952 from the Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and moved on to Auburn, graduating in 1957 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. (He later received an honorary doctorate.)

He walked on for the Tigers’ football team, under Coach Shug Jordan, but his athletic career was ended by an injury.

He “went to work for the Florida Highway Department (as an engineer in training) and for a contractor (Cone Brothers of Tampa) for about five years,” McCartney said in a 2016 interview, related in a press release from Auburn.

McCartney and his family returned home to Gadsden in 1962 to help his father run his local construction business, McCartney Construction Co., and ultimately became the company’s president.

“My dad started a little construction business here in Gadsden, Alabama, and wanted me to come home," he recalled in the 2016 interview. “We were happy in Florida, but the idea of coming home really sounded good to us, and we’ve been very grateful ever since.”

During his 61-year career, McCartney served as president of both the Alabama Asphalt Pavement Association and the Alabama Roadbuilders Association

McCartney was a member of AU’s Board of Trustees from 1979 through 1993. Five of those 14 years were spent serving as the president pro tempore, along with other roles for the university, including leadership roles in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

“Mr. McCartney was an iconic figure at Auburn and had tremendous impact on all aspects of the university,” AU President Christopher Roberts said. “As our former dean of engineering, I was able to witness first-hand the nationally relevant academic programs that he helped us build.”

While at the university, McCartney also was a founding board member of the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University and a lifetime member of the Auburn University Alumni Engineering Council.

He established the Michael B. McCartney Endowed Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and supported the completion of the Shelby Center for Engineering Technology through gifts to construct the McCartney Suite and Terrace. He was a founding member of the college’s Keystone Society.

The university in 2006 dedicated the brick plaza outside of the Tigers’ Den at Jordan-Hare Stadium as the Mike and Jane McCartney Plaza. (Jane, his first wife, died in 2013; they had been married for 57 years.)

“Auburn doesn’t just mean anything to me, Auburn means everything to me,” McCartney said at the dedication. “It’s not often that I talk about myself, but I couldn’t think of any other way to express what Auburn and Auburn football mean to me. What an honor it is to have the McCartney name associated with Jordan-Hare Stadium.”

McCartney was a member of the search committee that hired the late Pat Dye as the Tigers’ football coach in 1981.

“Mr. McCartney’s impact on half a century of Auburn athletics is undeniable,” said Tim Jackson, executive associate athletics director. “He’s tremendously impacted our facilities, our finances and the recommendation of excellent coaches for our programs.”

McCartney said Dye “struck a chord with him,” and that he felt the same way when Auburn hired Bruce Pearl as men’s basketball coach in 2014.

Pearl visited McCartney in Gadsden soon after getting the job, and in 2017, to commemorate a “significant gift” McCartney had made to enhance the program by providing funding for travel, recruiting and facility upgrades, the Athletics Department named the McCartney Atrium adjacent to the scholarship entrance at Neville Arena.

McCartney’s civic activities including membership on the Board of Stewards at First United Methodist; membership on the board of The Chamber of Gadsden & Etowah County; membership on the Metropolitan Planning Commission; chairing the Etowah County Tourism Board; and captain of the Gadsden Quarterback Club.

McCartney’s survivors include his three children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The family will welcome flowers, or in lieu of those, a memorial may be made to the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University or a charity of the donor’s choice.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Michael McCartney dies, 88: former Auburn University Board of Trustees