Alumni Resources
J. H. Owen Endowment in the College of Pharmacy
Jean H. Owen was president of Owen and Company, a hospital pharmacy services contracting company that he and his wife, Dian Graves Owen, founded in Abilene, Texas in 1969. Owen, a native of Norman, Oklahoma, served in the Army Air Corps. He attended The University of Oklahoma on the GI Bill and received a B.S. degree in Pharmacy in 1951. He later went on to obtain his M.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Medicine from Weslayan College. After graduation, Jean worked at Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, for 12 years.
Under the leadership of Jean and Dian, the company grew to 20 client hospitals in 7 states with annual revenue of $7 million by 1976. In September of 1976 Jean was killed in a plane crash.
Dian Owen took over as the chairman of the Board and, over the next twenty years, led a management team that built Owen Healthcare into a company with over $500 million in annual revenue and service agreements with over 300 client hospitals in 44 states. Jean H. Owen was a classic entrepreneur who took an idea and laid the foundation for a company that today is clearly a leader in its field. The memory of Jean is perpetuated through the scholarship fund established in his name.