Phillips Academy Trustee Emeritus Thomas Hunt Wyman ’47 passed away on January 8, 2003 at the age of 73. Mr. Wyman died at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston after suffering from complications of a severe abdominal infection. He served as a Trustee from 1986-1992. Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1930, Mr. Wyman was a dedicated Andover student, and continued to excel at Amherst College, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1951. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, he showed great aptitude for all aspects of academic life over the course of his high school and college years, and also became an all-American soccer player. After his graduation from Amherst, Mr. Wyman worked at the First National City Bank of New York. From 1953 to 1955 he served the country as an officer in the United States Army Corps of Engineers stationed in Korea. Upon his return to the United States, Mr. Wyman received a post at the Nestle Company, which he held for ten years before joining the Polaroid Corporation in 1965. Hard work and dedication led Mr. Wyman to become Senior Vice President, General Manager, and Chairman of the Management Committee of Polaroid over his years there. His commitment and perseverance to his work paid off in 1975, as he was recruited by the Green Giant Company to become its President and Chief Executive Officer. Over his years at Green Giant, Mr. Wyman was successful in revolutionizing the company’s product line, changing its focus from canned vegetables to the more popular “fancy” frozen variety. In 1979, when the Pillsbury Company acquired Green Giant, Mr. Wyman continued on as vice chairman of the combined company. In 1980 Mr. Wyman elected to leave the industry in favor of a position at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). At CBS, Mr. Wyman served as President and Chief Executive for three years, and was made Chairman of the company’s board in 1983. However, Mr. Wyman’s tenure at the helm of the network was not a happy one. Falling advertising revenues and sluggish ratings forced a management change in 1986, at which time Mr. Wyman resigned from the company’s operations. Following his term at CBS, Mr. Wyman served as a professor at Yale University’s School of Management under the auspices of the William H. Donaldson Distinguished Faculty Fellowship. Mr. Wyman also maintained a number of positions on the executive boards of many major corporations and organizations across the country. As a chief director at the Delphi Corporation, Mr. Wyman oversaw the company’s successful spin-off from parent company General Motors in the 1990s. Mr. Wyman’s other board memberships included stints at General Motors, AT&T, AEA Investors, Norwest Bank, The Boston Company, Kroll International, Toro, Imperial Chemical Industries, Green Giant, Pillsbury, Zeneca Group, United Biscuits, AGCO Corporation, Nestle USA, and the Toshiba Corporation. Mr. Wyman was also noticeably active in many philanthropic organizations during his lifetime. In addition to his time as a Trustee of Phillips Academy, he served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, Amherst College, and was a board member of the Ford Foundation, the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, the Aspen Institute, The United Way of America, the United Negro College Fund, and the Museum of Broadcasting. Mr. Wyman made headlines across the nation recently when he announced his resignation from the celebrated Augusta National Golf Club. The former Chief Executive was angered by the fact that the exclusive institution continues to bar women from applying for membership, and was quoted on the front page of the New York Times as saying “There are obviously some redneck, old-boy types there, but there are also a lot of very thoughtful rational people in our membership, and they feel as strongly as I do [about this issue].” At the time of his death, Mr. Wyman was residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School, and as a visiting lecturer at the Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is survived by his wife, four children, and eleven grandchildren.
