Sanford Noyes (Sandy) McDonnell (1922–2012)

Sanford Noyes (Sandy) McDonnell—an engineer, businessman, and philanthropist—was chief executive officer (CEO) and then chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas Corporation, one of the country’s largest aircraft manufacturers. He also served as national president of the Boys Scouts of America. The Arkansas Aviation Historical Society inducted McDonnell into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame in 1989.

Sandy McDonnell was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on October 12, 1922, to William Archibald McDonnell (the brother of James Smith McDonnell Jr., the founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation) and Carolyn Cherry McDonnell.

After graduating from Little Rock Central High School, McDonnell planned to follow his father into finance. He enrolled in Princeton University in 1940 but was diverted by World War II. In the U.S. Army, he trained as an engineer and worked in New Mexico as a technician on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bomb. He later wrote in a history article that as a “lowly G.I.” he had not contributed anything of note to the project and that most of the soldiers did not know what they were working on. He wrote, “At the end of the work day, I remember washing my hands until I no longer got a reading on the Geiger counter.”

After his discharge from the army, McDonnell married Priscilla Robb of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and they had two children.

McDonnell received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton in 1945 after receiving academic credit “in absentia” for six months of engineering in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). After the war, he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, receiving a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (1948), followed by a master’s degree in applied mechanics from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1954. He joined his uncle’s McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1948 as a stress engineer. He participated in the development of the supersonic F-101 Voodoo and the F-4 Phantom II jet fighters. In 1962, he was named vice president and general manager of all combat aircraft, and in 1971, he became the president of the company, by then McDonnell Douglas. The following year, he became CEO. He was CEO when McDonnell Douglas completed the Skylab space station in 1973. In 1980, James S. McDonnell died, and McDonnell succeeded him as chairman of the board, a role he retained until 1988. (The Boeing Company bought McDonnell Douglas in 1997).

During his service at the company, McDonnell had a strong interest in ethics. He had been a Boy Scout as a youth, and after serving as the national president of the Boy Scouts of America from 1984 to 1986, he used the Scout Promise as the basis for the company’s Code of Ethics.

In 1987, McDonnell became the first president of the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, a foundation that supports the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program that recognizes U.S. organizations.

McDonnell died at his home in Clayton, Missouri, on March 19, 2012, from complications from pancreatic cancer. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

For additional information:
Arkansas Aviation Historical Society. https://arkavhs.com/#hero (accessed August 27, 2025).

Arkansas Aviation Historical Society Collection. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Central Arkansas Library System, Little Rock, Arkansas. Finding aid online here (accessed August 27, 2025).

Dewan, Shalia. “Sanford McDonnell, Aerospace Leader, Dies at 89.” New York Times, March 21, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/business/sanford-mcdonnell-aerospace-leader-dies-at-89.html (accessed August 27, 2025).

“Sanford N. McDonnell.” Atomic Heritage Foundation. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/sanford-n-mcdonnell/ (accessed August 27, 2025).

Richard N. Holbert
Little Rock, Arkansas