When Dr. Dan Ennis became president of Delta State University in 2023, he had to confront significant budget challenges and an ongoing deficit and turned to former DSU President Forest Kent Wyatt for advice.
Wyatt took Ennis to have lunch at The Warehouse, a restaurant in Cleveland, Mississippi, inside a high-ceilinged wooden building that was once a cotton warehouse. After the two sat at their table and chatted for a time, Wyatt reached into his pocket, took out a yellow sheet of paper and slid it across the table to Ennis. Ennis read the paper and found that it was filled with notes Wyatt had taken during his own tenure as DSU president, which showed that Wyatt had also faced a deficit and budget cuts starting out.
“(Wyatt) told me that the earliest years are always the toughest,” Ennis said. “He said that when you have to deal with hard things, you do it quickly and thoroughly and you do it right, and then you can carry on with all the other things a president does. I still keep that piece of paper in my desk to this day and often take it out to look at it. It inspires me and keeps my morale up.”
Even though Ennis had only known Wyatt for three years after their first meeting at The Warehouse, Wyatt’s recent passing at age 92 on Aug. 25, 2026, hit him hard. Though Wyatt had been retired since 1999, he had remained in Cleveland and kept an office at DSU, where he served as president emeritus and was always willing to share his knowledge and experience with the faculty and students. Ennis regularly had lunch with Wyatt and met with him at his Cleveland home multiple times per month.
“It was obvious just from him wanting to be there as much as he was that he cared deeply about this university, and it was just as obvious that people depended on him,” Ennis said. “He would always shake my hand and wish me luck with anything I did and would go out of his way to fulfill a promise or help out in any way he could. He gave everything for Delta State right up to the end. He’s the greatest president we’ve ever had and maybe ever will, and we’re all better off from his leadership.”
Finding Success as a Coach and Administrator
Dr. Forest Kent Wyatt was born in Berea, Kentucky, and moved to Cleveland, Mississippi, with his family in 1945. His father, Forest Earl Wyatt, served as head football coach for DSU. Wyatt attended elementary school at Hill Demonstration School, which was located on the grounds of DSU until its closure in 1957. He played football and other sports at Cleveland High School and worked as a lifeguard for DSU’s swimming pool until he graduated in 1952.
He enrolled at Delta State Teachers College and played football, basketball and tennis. Wyatt served as class president for the university and also joined the college’s cheerleading squad during his sophomore year to get close to a cheerleader named Janice Collins, whom he later married during his senior year. The two remained married for 70 years and had two daughters named Tara and Elizabeth.
After graduating from DSU in 1956 with a double major in mathematics and health, physical education and recreation, Wyatt enrolled at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he received a master’s degree in mathematics. He also received a doctorate in education with an emphasis in administration and supervision from the University of Mississippi in 1970 and pursued advanced study at Harvard University in 1975.
Wyatt moved to Mobile, Alabama, in 1956 and spent four years there teaching math and coaching junior high and varsity football, as well as varsity basketball and tennis. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ready Reserve unit at Fort Benning and Fort Jackson while attending USM. In 1960 he moved back to Cleveland and worked as a coach, teacher and administrator for the Cleveland School System before DSU hired him as the university’s first full-time alumni secretary in 1964.
He later took a position as assistant to the president at DSU in 1969 and became a professor of education for the school that same year. He became the fifth president of DSU in 1975, which was the university’s 50th anniversary. Wyatt was the first alumnus of DSU to serve as its president. He later served as honorary chair for the university during its Centennial Celebration in 2025.
During Wyatt’s tenure as DSU president the university constructed 18 new buildings and renovated a number of others. He also grew the faculty from 202 to 328 and helped DSU’s academic programs gain national accreditation.
Wyatt was the first DSU president to be inducted into the Gulf South Conference Hall of Fame and received the S.E. Kossman Award from the Chamber of Commerce for most outstanding contribution to the community. He also earned the Herman C. Glazier Mississippi Administrator of the Year Award and the All-American Football Foundation’s Outstanding College President Award.
‘Do What’s Best for the University’
Dr. Everett Butch Caston, a former professor who had been serving as dean of the College of Education at DSU when he retired in 2004, first met Wyatt when Caston was an undergraduate coming into the university in 1963. After Caston graduated from DSU he went on to take a position as an assistant superintendent in Hattiesburg. Wyatt had become a close friend of Caston’s during his time at DSU and spoke with him often about coming back to work for his alma mater.
“He called me a number of times and offered me several positions outside of academics, but I wanted to work in academics and asked if he could wait until I finished getting a doctorate before we talked about me coming back to DSU more,” Caston said. “He agreed, and I didn’t hear more about it for some time.”
Things finally came to a head one evening when Caston was at home in bed with the flu. Caston had spent some time working on building a fishing camp on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, so when his phone rang, he expected it to be a call from the carpenter he had been working with. Instead, it was Wyatt calling him with another job offer, this time as director of field experiences and coordinator of teacher education for DSU’s College of Education.
“I remember he told me he’d called several times with different offers and that I’d turned him down each time, and that this was the last time he was going to call,” Caston said. “This time I finally accepted.”
Minutes after accepting Wyatt’s job offer, Caston’s phone rang again, and he thought it was Wyatt calling back with more details. This time, however, it actually was his carpenter calling him to finalize details for the construction of his fishing camp in Hattiesburg.
“I had to apologize to him and tell him he was out of luck,” Caston said. “I told him I’d just accepted a new job that was going to have me moving out of Hattiesburg and into Cleveland.”
Caston spent decades working together with Wyatt at DSU and, like Dan Ennis, frequently turned to him for advice. Once they had both retired, the two even lived only a few houses apart and continued to frequently see each other.
“The first advice he ever gave me was to handle and weigh my relationships with my fellow employees and community members carefully because they were also my friends,” Caston said. “He always said that in difficult times our job is to do what’s best for the university. He had his own ways of maintaining high standards and significant discipline while fostering a close relationship with all of our students and faculty and the Cleveland community.”
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