Sandy resident, Malcolm Boyd died peacefully at his home on Saturday, April 7, 2012. He lived with his wife Jane of 66 years at the home they built in 1981.
A graveside service with Military Honors and a Bag Piper will be held at Willamette National Cemetery on Friday, April 20, 2012 at 12:30 p.m.
Malcolm William Boyd was born in his grandparent’s home in Brooklyn, New York on September 30, 1922 to William and Edna (Malcolm) Boyd. The family moved to New Jersey in 1931 where Malcolm received his education. Shortly after graduating from Bogota High School in 1939 at the age of 16, he furthered his education that same year at Rutgers University where he lettered in Fencing and majored in Forestry.
The war cut his education short and in August of 1942, he enlisted in the navy. He spent two years in aOS2U Kingfisher Squadron at Floyd Bennett Field in New York during the Battle of the Atlantic. In February of 1944, Malcolm left San Francisco on board the USS Monticello, a converted Italian liner and arrived four weeks later in New Guinea. He was attached to PBY Catalina Squadron as a pay clerk. In that capacity, he flew to the various flying boat tenders on a monthly basis. The end of the war found him at Clark Field in the Philippines. In February of 1946, he arrived in San Francisco from the South Pacific where he was married to Jane Forrest who he had met 2 years before at a dance in San Francisco. In April of that same year he was honorably discharged in New York.
Malcolm and Jane settled in San Francisco where he completed his education at the University of California in Berkeley. He graduated with a Bachelor’s with honors in Journalism in 1951. He then began his a career as a journalist and was employed for a wire service, United Press International but soon transferred to the Call-Bulletin, a San Francisco daily paper. In 1955, Malcolm became the managing editor of a steamship magazine, The Pacific Shipper. In that capacity, he wrote numerous articles and became a leading advocate of normalizing relations with mainland China.
In 1960, he transferred to advertising and from that into public relations for various corporations. It was in 1979 that he retired as a public relations director of the California Trucking Association. One year later, he and Jane moved to Sandy to be closer to their son William. Malcolm then became a correspondent for the Oregonian, covering the areas from Sandy to Government Camp until retiring in 1991.
The things which most defined Malcolm were many and varied interests. In college he began cycling and yachting and from there his interest multiplied. In 1959, the family moved to Palo Alto and he added archery, mountaineering and fishing. In the late 1950’s, he began learning the Bagpipes which he would pursue for the next 30 years. He became Pipe-Major and played with the Oregon National Guard Pipe Band in Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Inaugural Parade. He also played in the Peninsula Recorder Orchestra. Malcolm also enjoyed target shooting, home brewing and model plane flying. In the last 20 years, he became interested in mountain man re-enactments which evolved into the Revolutionary War. He formed Revolutionary War Fife and Drum Corps which marched in the 2005 Rose Festival Parade. Because of an injury to his finger he couldn’t play the bagpipe so he learned the Dulcimer and was studying the Zither at the time of his death.
Malcom is survived by his wife Jane and his son and daughter in law, William and Barbara Boyd of Hood River.