Thomas D. Wood, 79; President of Marymount College During Change

Thomas D. Wood, who was president of Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes from 1973 to 1992, died Wednesday from complications of heart disease, according to Thomas McFadden, the current president of Marymount.

Wood had been hospitalized at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, where he died. He was 79.

Born in Long Beach, Wood graduated from Whittier College and earned his doctorate in education at USC. Before joining Marymount, he was the provost of Whittier College.

Wood was the first layman to be named president of Marymount College. Previously, the school had been headed by nuns in the order of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary who founded the school.

He became president while the school was in the throes of a major transition. The year before Wood arrived, the small, Roman Catholic women’s college had merged with the all-male Roman Catholic Loyola College in Westchester to form Loyola Marymount University.

“Tom always joked he’d been hired to bury Marymount College,” McFadden said Friday in an interview with The Times.

Instead, a new institution was born -- a two-year college that retained the name Marymount but was separate.

Wood oversaw the sale of the large campus to the Salvation Army, which used the site to establish Crestmont College, a training school for Salvation Army officers.

In 1976, the new, smaller Marymount moved to the nearby campus of a former girls’ boarding school.

Marymount’s decimated enrollment grew from about 125 to about 750 students in Wood’s 19 years as president.

“It was uncertain that Marymount could stand alone,” McFadden said. “Tom was the savior of Marymount.”

After retiring from academic life, Wood was active in community service in Long Beach, where he lived. He was also a member of the board of Crestmont College.

Wood is survived by his wife, Shirley, two sons, two daughters, a sister and 11 grandchildren.

A funeral Mass is planned for 11 a.m. Monday at St. Bartholomew’s Roman Catholic Church, 5100 E. Broadway, Long Beach.