From the Bottom Quartile to the Top of the Heap: Mark McDonough, Class of 1972
Mark McDonough ’72, the former co-owner of Buckingham Manufacturing—the most trusted safety equipment manufacturer for linemen, arborists and telecom professionals in the United States—will be the first to tell you that he didn’t take his studies seriously during his high school days in Binghamton, New York, in the 1960s.
“I was in the bottom quartile,” he says when we caught up with him at Reunion Weekend in June. “I just had a good time, and I didn’t do well.”
Despite his lack of enthusiasm for his schoolwork, Mark knew that he wanted to apply to a few colleges, including The University of Scranton, which his oldest brother, James L. McDonough ’63, had attended. When he met with his guidance counselor early in his senior year of high school, however, he was told that his plans were unrealistic.
“He said ‘Forget it. Go to a local community college, and you’ll be lucky if you get in there,’” Mark says. The rejection letters he began receiving after their meeting seemed to confirm his guidance counselor’s opinion, much to Mark’s chagrin.
That all changed when a fellow Binghamton native, Charles V. Costello ’51, arranged an interview for Mark with the Rev. Bernard R. McIlhenny, S.J. H’98. The Scranton legend, known informally as “Father Mac,” was then-dean of admissions at the University. After their discussion, Mark was accepted at Scranton, but there was a catch: He had to attend the University’s “pre-college” program, a six-week probationary session designed to prepare incoming students with less-than-stellar academic records for the rigors of college.
“I graduated on a Saturday, and on Sunday came to Scranton,” he says. “They taught us speed reading, how to use the library and a few other things.
“It was a transition. It was tough…I decided, ‘Maybe it’s time to study?’”
During that time, Mark lived in Hafey Hall, which was also occupied by the Rev. Joseph A. Rock, S.J. H’81, then-academic vice president of the University, and the two struck up a friendship.
“I really liked Father Rock,” he says. “Every night, he would be down outside smoking. He would tell stories, and he held Mass in the bottom of the dorm.”
After completing the pre-college program, Mark continued to take his studies seriously and excelled academically. Although he initially majored in business, he found that he had a knack for accounting and soon switched his major accordingly. When his hard work began to pay off, he learned an important lesson about the relationship between effort and achievement; he also learned that success truly is the best revenge.
“After my freshman year, my [cumulative GPA] was right under 3.4. I made a copy of that and sent it to my high school guidance counselor, and I wrote on it, ‘You told me if I got in I’d fail out—how’s this?’”
At Scranton, Mark played intramural basketball and flag football, and he worked in the bookstore as an underclassman and in the collections department of what was then Mercy Hospital as an upperclassman. Because Scranton was still all male, he lived a sort of monastic life of the mind during the week and returned home most weekends.
“I hardly did anything but study Monday to Thursday night,” he says. “In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened—that there were no women and there was no social life—because, knowing me, I would have got in trouble and not paid attention to what was important.
“[Scranton] really gave me a base and a chance.”
During one of his trips home, Mark met his future wife, Carol, when a fellow Scranton student set them up at a wedding.
“She didn’t know what she was getting into,” he says with a laugh.
When one of his brothers enrolled at King’s College at the same time Mark was attending Scranton, he applied for financial aid, and when he discussed the situation with Fr. Rock, he received a half tuition scholarship that would alleviate his financial concerns as long as he kept his grades up.
“I went home and showed that to my Dad,” he says with pride.
By senior year, he landed an internship with Arthur Andersen, one of the Big 8 accounting firms of the time, and he began working for them after graduation. He married Carol, who was working for IBM, in August of 1972. Soon afterward, they welcomed Kevin, the first of their three children, into the world in 1973.
After spending two years with Arthur Andersen, Mark took a job at a small CPA firm in Binghamton that specialized in handling small business clients.
“They taught me accounting—real accounting, not auditing,” he says. “Andersen was auditing people’s books; this was nuts and bolts.”
As he worked more closely with his small business clients, Mark began to suspect he had the skill set to run his own company.
“In my mind, I was kind of like, ‘I’m smarter than this guy, I could do this,’” he says. “That was the seed that eventually led to [Buckingham Manufacturing].”
Mark worked his way up to the position of vice president/treasurer of Raymond Corporation, a public company which manufactured forklift trucks. After he and Carol welcomed their second child, Chris, into the world in 1976, and Kathryn ’04, their third child, in 1982, he and a fellow executive at Raymond purchased Buckingham Manufacturing in 1984. Over the next 25 years, they grew the company from 38 employees to 240 employees, proving that Mark’s suspicion that he would succeed in business was absolutely correct.
“We worked hard at it and expanded it, and we were fortunate,” Mark says. “It took several years, and then it really grew.”
Mark credits a great deal of his success to the lessons he learned at Scranton, especially the notion of cura personalis, or caring for the whole person.
“At the time I started at the University, I didn’t really understand the concept,” he says. “The best example I can give is when I started at Andersen, I was sent to school for three weeks to learn the Andersen way to audit. Classes were very difficult, and I found the homework challenging, to say the least.
“Several of my classmates had graduated from places…where their focus had been much deeper on working for a large public accounting firm. They excelled in class, and the homework was a breeze to them. This was due to the fact that their classes were tailored only to subjects pertaining to business and accounting, whereas mine [included] other liberal arts classes such as philosophy.”
Although Mark initially envied those individuals, he soon realized any advantage they may have had was extremely short-lived.
“What I learned over time was that some of these individuals were excellent technically in accounting and auditing but lacking in creative or critical thinking,” he says. “When I was at Scranton, I thought these liberal arts courses were a waste, but over time, they enabled me to be not only more well-rounded, but also helped me be a better manager in my career.”
Mark sold his stake in Buckingham Manufacturing and retired in 2009. Today, he and Carol split their time between their residences in Binghamton and Naples, Florida, and they enjoy visiting with their eight grandchildren throughout the year.
“Retirement has been spectacular,” he says. “I’m happy.”
Despite his considerable success, Mark never forgot that his Scranton education gave him the tools he needed to ascend from the bottom quartile, and he and Carol recently established The McDonough Family Scholarship In Memory Of Rev. Joseph Rock, S.J., a scholarship that, when fully endowed, will give a Scranton student the same opportunity Fr. Rock gave to Mark more than half a century ago.
“Scranton focused me, and it paid off,” he says. “Somebody gave money years ago to help me, and it’s important to give back. I’ve been so fortunate, and, A, you can’t take it with you, and, B, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be anyway.
“You have to give back or pay it forward.”
Like Mark, you, too, can create a better tomorrow for future generations of Scranton students with a gift in your estate plan. To learn how you can make a positive impact, contact Carol Maculloch, MBA, CFRE at 570-941-7799 or plannedgiving@scranton.edu.