Lifetime Trustee Peggy Wood, ’61, served as chair of both the OSU Foundation and OSU Alumni Association boards

Peggy Wood made exceptional contributions to Oregon State University in decades of service as a volunteer leader, leaders said following the Feb. 7 death of the Portland, Oregon, resident. She was 84.

A 1961 College of Business graduate, Wood was a retired financial executive with Hallock Modey, a Portland marketing firm. She was the one of just five volunteer leaders who have served as chair of both the OSU Foundation (2000-01) and the OSU Alumni Association (1991-92) boards. She was one of the early backers of plans to build the CH2M HILL Alumni Center and then helped plan the center’s 20th anniversary celebration in 2017. She also served more than a decade on the Trysting Tree Golf Club board, and was a founding member of the OSU Women’s Giving Circle, where she and her daughter, Mary Beth Wood, ’85, were among the group’s first mother-daughter pairs. Wood also served on the Council of Regents Advisory Committee and the Harvey Ranch Corporate Board and Advisory Committee.

She received the OSU Foundation’s highest recognition for volunteer leaders, the Lifetime Trustee award, in 2019 and the alumni association’s Jean & C.H. “Scram” Graham Leadership Award in 2006. Members of the Strand Society, Wood and her late husband, Joe, a 1960 College of Science graduate, generously supported the College of Business, OSU Athletics, the alumni association and other university programs.

“It was a joy to spend time with Peggy,” said Shawn L. Scoville, OSU Foundation president and CEO. “When we honored her as a Lifetime Trustee, we recorded a video where she told the funny story of how she chose OSU as a student: she ‘had thoughts of being a nun’ but, ‘by the first week on campus I was understanding that that was not my calling.’” ( Here’s another classic Peggy story from the same interview.) “From that first week, she was forever devoted to OSU. She was a constant beam of OSU sunshine, and I will miss her.”