A Kansas University graduate who rose to the top of the international business world has died.

Larry Horner, former chief executive officer of the big-four accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick, died recently at the San Jose del Cabo, Mexico home he shared with his wife, Donna Manning Horner.

Former KU Athletic Director Monte Johnson said Horner, a 1956 graduate of the university and member of the Jayhawk football team, was the ideal student-athlete.

“He was a student first and athlete second. He was an extremely good student and an extremely good athlete,” he said.

Horner’s career would give him a place in the board rooms of a big-four accounting firm and Fortune 500 companies, but he kept his alma mater in his heart, actively supporting the university, Johnson said. As a man whose career benefited from foreign postings, he was particularly interested in helping students study aboard, and in 2007 he and his wife endowed the $500,000 Horner Study Abroad Scholarship Fund. The scholarship is available to all KU students, but there is an emphasis for those activities associated with the KU Center for International Business Education and Research.

“Not many people knew what he did because he did it for the right reasons and not for personal recognition,” Johnson said. “I remember having lunch with him and his wife, Donna, when he talked about how he wanted to do what he could to make sure business students who wanted to study abroad would have that opportunity.”

Born in 1934, Horner completed his Bachelor of Science in business in 1956. According to a statement his former firm released on news of his death, Horner started work after graduation at the Kansas City office of Peat Marwick Mitchell & Company. He was made a partner in 1964, heading the Miami, Fla. office before relocating to Europe. He was head of the firm’s Frankfurt, Germany office until he became the CEO of Peat in 1984.

While CEO, he oversaw the 1987 merger of Peat Marwick Mitchell & Company and Klynveld Main and Goerdeler, creating KPMG Peat Marwick.

Horner left the firm in 1991, and went on to serve on the boards of such corporations as ConocoPhillips, American General Company, Atlantis Plastics, UT Starcom Inc., chairing the board of directors of USA Holding Corp. and the Asia Pacific Wire Cable Ltd.