Remembering Bob Cleverdon, Class of 1940

Cleverdon was a dedicated Red Wing who, well into his 90s, continued to travel to campus for sporting events, Homecoming, and the school’s Veterans Day commemoration. At Rivers, he played hockey, football, and baseball, and enjoyed the school’s small class sizes and personal approach. Joining the school as a junior was “the best move my family ever made,” he said in a 2019 interview. He often walked from the family home in Newton Centre to the Rivers campus, then located on Dean Road in Brookline—a distance of about three miles.
 

A highlight of Cleverdon’s long and notable life was his service during World War II. Like many of his “Greatest Generation” peers, Cleverdon shrugged it off as “nothing spectacular.” But many observers, including the government of France, would respectfully disagree: In 2019, Cleverdon was awarded the French Legion Medal of Honor with Chevalier Distinction, in a Bastille Day ceremony that took place at the Cambridge residence of France’s consul general in Boston. The service that he dismissed as “nothing spectacular” included 30 bombing missions over Europe. Three of those missions targeted Nazi forces in France, and it was in gratitude for these particular efforts that Cleverdon, an Army Air Corps navigator who served on the crew of a B-24 bomber, received the medal. In that same 2019 interview, Cleverdon credited Rivers with helping him through his wartime service. Asked if he took any lessons from the school to war with him, he replied, “Teamwork. That’s what I learned.” The hockey rink and the classroom, it seemed, were good training for the camaraderie and esprit de corps of the bomber crew.

Back home after the war, Cleverdon attended Babson College and Wentworth Institute before joining the family business, civil engineering firm Cleverdon, Varney & Pike. Through it all, he remained close to his Rivers friends, and it was through them that he met his future wife, Margery, at a party thrown by former classmates. The two were married in 1949 and went on to raise their four children—Linda, Robert, Mark, and Lisa—in Wellesley. Margery passed away in 2008.

Cleverdon maintained his ties to Rivers, returning to campus frequently, serving on the Alumni Council, and receiving that body’s inaugural Distinguished Service Award in 2010. Perhaps most meaningful was his annual pilgrimage to Weston to participate in Rivers’ Veterans Day commemoration. His daughter Lisa would accompany him, and she wrote in a recent letter to the community, “I was proud each year to take him to the Veterans’ Day ceremony…He was always uncomfortable getting up and saying anything, so he made it short and sweet, but the thing that always made people gasp was his 30 missions flown and completed. That was the nicest recognition of veterans and active servicemen and women I have ever seen. I wish every school followed your model.” But it was Cleverdon himself who, through his words and actions, provided a model for a life of service, sacrifice, humility, and honor. We are proud to call Bob Cleverdon a Red Wing. 

Cleverdon is survived by his children, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a niece and nephew. Please click here to read his obituary.