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They say if you want something done you should ask a busy person. Apparently one of the people “they” said it to was the late PA Dean of Admissions Joshua Miner, who made a memorable phone call in 1973 to Marshall Cloyd ’58, then the youngest vice president of the 87,000-employee Brown and Root (now KBR), at that time the largest engineering construction company in the world.
“I was sitting quietly in my office,” Cloyd recalls, “and Josh phoned and said, ‘Marshall, I see you’re in Singapore.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He said, ‘What are you doing out there?’ I said, ‘I’m just trying to run this Southeast Asian operation. I’ve got around 2,500 people and I’m doing around $250 million to
$300 million a year in business designing and building everything from paper mills to offshore oil developments. He said, ‘You know, I think there are some very smart people in Singapore who are very well educated.’ I said, ‘Yeah, there are all kinds of intelligent people here.’ And he said, ‘Great. I need six kids set up for interviews in the next two weeks. I’ll give you a ring.’ I said, ‘Hey, I’m trying to run an engineering company here.’ He said, ‘I’ll call you in two weeks.’ I’ve been working as a volunteer for Andover ever since.”
Cloyd, a licensed professional engineer, did his undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley and Southern Methodist University and performed graduate studies at Stanford University’s engineering department and Harvard Business School. Besides helping recruit talented applicants to Phillips Academy, Cloyd has served on the Andover Development Board and has been a class agent, Non Sibi agent and reunion gift committee member. But the volunteer service closest to his heart may be his role in helping to reconfigure the mission of the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology (see page 24).
The museum, which houses some half a million Native Amer-ican artifacts spanning 12 millenia, first captured Cloyd’s attention when the Texas native was a junior at PA. Already he had the soul of a scientist and engineer, and the ancient materials piqued his curiosity. He returned over and over during his four years at Andover, always surprised to see how few other students frequented the fascinating facility.
When the alum’s daughter Catherine “Carey” Cloyd ’95 registered at the academy decades later, he decided to spend a portion of her first Parents’ Weekend introducing her to the Peabody. As he began filling her in on Andover’s involvement in archaeology, from 1894 graduate Hiram Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu and on up to the Peabody’s collaborative work with the University of Chicago in the 1950s, his narrative attracted the attention of the museum staff. He went on to speak of the early carbon-14 dating of artifacts and past director Scotty MacNeish’s election to the National Academy of Science.
Throughout Carey’s years at Andover, and later throughout the PA career of her sister, Trudi Cloyd ’03, past director James Bradley and colleagues engaged the dad again and again. Cloyd in turn supported Peabody activities with both time and treasure, providing financial backing as well as agreeing to serve on the museum’s visiting committee.
Says Malinda Blustain, current director of the Peabody, “We instantly loved Marshall Cloyd for his curious, voracious intellect. His passion for science and his astuteness as a businessman have equipped him to help put the museum on a firmer footing for the future.”
One massive contribution Cloyd made to the Peabody was his service on the Peabody’s visiting committee and on a planning committee that met over the course of two years to help secure the museum’s future by reshaping its mission. Another was a generous challenge gift of $500,000 through which he and his wife, Robin, hope to stimulate an additional $1 million in donations to the Peabody’s endowment. In addition, he helped support collaborative student research work linking the museum and Andover’s science division by committing some $12,000 to buy updated laboratory equipment for the Gelb Science Center.
Cloyd, chairman of Inter-Marine, an international offshore marine business, says he is involved with two other museums, the American Air Museum at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, England, and the Lone Star Flight Museum and Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in Galveston, Texas. Fellow Texan George Bush ’42 is honorary chairman of the American Air Museum and has been honored by the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame.
Cloyd’s work with Andover and the Peabody, however, brought added satisfaction for a variety of reasons. For instance?
“I went to school there. My two daughters and my son [Marshall Cloyd ’88] went to school there. I loved the academy and those people involved in it. I was interested in trying to be a catalyst in the reactions that can go on between the science division and the museum and between students and professional researchers. I liked the idea of educating future generations about how a museum runs, whether they are going to be archaeologists and cultural historians or whether they are going to sit some day on the boards of directors that raise money and guide museums. Most of all, I was determined to call attention to an abundance of extraordinary resources most people don’t even know about.”
—Theresa Pease |
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