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In the weeks after the unexpected death of 25-year-old Jacques Allain last summer, his parents, Jeanne and Moe Allain, and his younger sister, Camille, attempted to heal by recalling a lifetime of happy memories with him. Many of those memories, they said, were spending time with Jacques during his years at the University of Mississippi.
Jacques, a 2020 graduate of the Ole Miss School of Business Administration from Houston, Texas, loved his time on campus and enjoyed sharing his life here with his family. The Allain family felt the best way to honor Jacques’ life would be to establish a scholarship in his name at the school he loved.
“Whether we were attending an Ole Miss football or baseball game or gathering for a meal on the Square, it was always a good time,” Moe Allain said. “Jacques wanted to be great in his field, and I thought establishing a scholarship would be one of the best ways to remember him and honor his legacy forever.”
The Jacques Allain Memorial Scholarship will be awarded to freshmen from Texas or Louisiana enrolled in the business school and majoring in business administration or finance, the fields that Jacques pursued during his time at Ole Miss.
The Allain family invites everyone who knew Jacques to join them in making a gift to the scholarship endowment to ensure that his legacy at the university lives on.
Jacques had his eyes on Ole Miss from the first day he and his family visited for a tour. As a Louisiana native and Louisiana State University alumnus, Moe Allain wanted to steer his son in the direction of his alma mater, but his efforts were to no avail. As they drove back home to Houston, Jacques said he was sold on Ole Miss.
“He fell in love with the campus and the people, and we didn’t visit any other schools after that,” his father recalled.
While Jacques was a student at Ole Miss, his younger sister, Camille, attended the University of Arkansas. They spent several weekends taking turns visiting each other’s campuses, sharing SEC traditions they had learned and indulging in one another’s favorite local food spots.
Jacques, a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, was memorialized by his fraternity brothers and friends as a dedicated, caring person who would drop everything for a friend in need.
“It didn’t matter if his friend called him up at 2 o’clock in the morning. We heard a lot of those stories when we were doing his Celebration of Life,” Moe Allain said. “There were some things we didn’t know about. We didn’t know how good of a friend he was until his friends told us. That was important for us to hear.”
Alpha Tau Omega served as a gateway for Allain to volunteer in the local community, mentoring students at Lafayette and Oxford high schools through the nonprofit group Moneythink. He was a member of the Financiers Club through the business school, majoring in managerial finance and earning a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.
Post-graduation, Jacques Allain continued to be entrenched in the world of finance, with his last position as a financial analyst for Sysco, a wholesale restaurant food distributor. He was excited by the role, regularly participating in calls with the CFO of the multinational company, his parents said.
Jacques knew how to have fun but equally took his studies seriously, his father said. For the scholarship, his parents hope to see it awarded to students who share similar qualities and have an interest in the financial field.
“We’re hoping that the award winners embrace the field, pay it forward and also do some mentoring,” Moe Allain said. “We really want them to make a mark in that field in the future.”
By establishing the Jacques Allain Memorial Scholarship Endowment, the Allain family turned their tragedy into a way to help many deserving banking and finance students for years to come. Jacques Allain’s legacy will continue to live on through the creation of this endowment.
Please join the Allain family and invest in the future of Ole Miss business students.
