Colyer Crum, Beloved HBS Finance Professor, Dead at 89.
M. (Morrison) Colyer Crum died of heart difficulties on May 17, 2022 in his apartment at North Hill, a popular retirement community in Needham, MA. He loved his late wife, Lois, and was loved by his four children, Bill, Rick, Nancy and Wendy, as well as eight grandchildren.
Professor Crum was born on June 5th, 1932, in Newark, New Jersey, and had a fairly conventional childhood. His mother was a flapper who got kicked out of school for smoking and his father spent his whole career working at The Standard Oil Company, which became Esso and then Exxon. His father joked that Exxon made less money from oil (due to OPEC) than from selling “TBA” (Tires, Batteries and Accessories) the division that his father ultimately ran.
It was like how people earned more selling shovels and plates in the California Gold Rush than the prospectors. Colyer served in the Korean War, defending New Mexico, and earned credits under the G.I. Bill. But it was while at Cornell University, earning a BS in Chemical Engineering, that he met his future wife, Lois Dodd, who became a registered nurse and helped him endure a lengthy rehabilitation process following a toboggan accident.
“Collie” and Lois got married on July 1st, 1956, and moved to Charleston, West Virginia, where he got a job as a Chemical Engineer at Union Carbide, however, within a year and a half, he found the work boring and repetitive, and they decided to relocate to Bedford, MA. That move was so he could enroll in Harvard Business School’s MBA program, using his G.I. Tuition Credits. In 1960, he graduated as a “Baker Scholar,” earning his MBA with highest honors, and then stayed on to enter the Doctorate Program.
‘Collie’ Crum earned his DBA in record time and was appointed an Assistant Professor and overhauled an antiquated course in Investment Management, which became the most popular second year elective course, with close to 500 students attending at a time.
In May 1966, Collie’s younger brother, Robert, Jr. was killed in the Vietnam War and received the Silver Star and a Purple Heart for helping half his squad to escape a Vietnam ambush. Robert, Jr. had enlisted as a Second Lieutenant in the Army.
By 1971, Collie became the youngest tenured Finance Professor at HBS. As an academician, he was more a popularizer of other’s ideas than an original theoretician. He wrote no major books and few articles, unlike more famous economists like John Maynard Keynes or Milton Friedman preferring to use phrases like “the psychology of finance.” He was popular amongst HBS students, partly because he chose not to “cold call” or put on the spot, preferring to debate case facts and start the discussion with those most prepared and informed. However, he could and would maintain class discipline with amusing quips like, “Why should a smart person like me answer a dumb question like that?” or saying, “Even my dog knows that!” followed by a mechanized dog barking.
Colyer advocated for the use of mainframe computers for data formatting and supported a more diverse student body, including more female and minority students. Collie and Lois moved on to Lexington and then to Weston, buying a house on Ash Street, which they expanded greatly. Lois and Collie supported local charitable causes. They were founding members of the Congregational Church of Weston, and supported The Roxbury/Weston Pre-School Program, Boy and Girl Scouts of Weston and local sports. In 1973-74 during the height of the OPEC oil embargo, they invested in “Tall Timbers” a 26-sided vacation house in Sunapee, New Hampshire.
As part of the landmark Penn Central Railroad Bankruptcy Reorganization, Collie worked with Victor Palmieri, a “turnaround artist” and CEO, who appointed him to the Board of Pennco, the non-railroad subsidiary, which owned Arvida, a real estate investment firm controlling Boca Raton Hotel and Club, a famous hotel and resort in Florida.
As The James R. Williston Professor of Business Administration, Colyer also served in a growing number of other corporate boards over time, such as Cambridge Trust Company, and SunLife of Canada, and charities such as The New England Home for Little Wanderers. Then as Associate Dean at HBS, he took over HBS’s Executive Education Programs, including the AMP (Advanced Management Program) and PMD (Program for Management Development).
In 1979, Lois and Colyer bought a condominium and a golf membership at Boca West to be closer to Lois’ mother, Edna May Dodd, who lived in Lantana, Florida and was also mother to Lois’ sister, Nancy B. Le Fevre.
By the mid-1980s, Colyer was spending more time teaching overseas in Japan, Switzerland, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa than in the U.S.
In 1989, Lois and Colyer sold their house on Ash Street and moved to 104 Westcliff Road, which featured not just a bomb shelter but also a wine cellar, because what good is one without the other?
On July 20th, 1996, Lois and Colyer celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary and Colyer’s retirement from HBS after 35 years with a special celebration at the Henderson House in Weston, MA at which the Crum children and their spouses performed a rhyming “Poem Tome for Colyer and Lois.” Ten years later, on August 6th, 2006, Lois and Colyer celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at the Broodmore Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado with the four kids and eight grandchildren.
In the summer of 2012, Lois and Colyer, new to their ninth decade, decided to sell their Westcliff house and move into North Hill, a retirement community in Needham, MA. The “downsizing” required some difficult choices about what to keep, store, give away or “unload onto Bill and Susan” like all the books that Bill wanted to look through and possibly own.
As part of their entrance agreement, Lois and Colyer’s golden retriever, Emma, got special permission to stay at North Hill and facilitated North Hill changing to a pet-friendly policy. Emma was popular with the residents and participated in group dog walks with other residents.
In their final years, both Colyer and Lois had to sell their cars and fortunately were able to maintain an active social and dining lifestyle by using drivers for a customized van able to accommodate Colyer’s motorized wheelchair. On November 4th, 2019, Lois finally passed away from kidney cancer.
Colyer also required frequent hospitalizations which were arranged by their Health Proxy, Wendy.
In the end, Colyer Crum didn’t make it to age 90, or to outer space like William Shatner, but still lived a full, productive, and fascinating life.
In lieu of flowers expressions of sympathy may be made in Colyer Crum’s memory to The Garden at Elm Bank, 900 Washington St., Wellesley, MA 02482.