Team Leader Profile – Bill Marshall
by Leon Rubis
A Master Builder’s Career of Craftmanship and Volunteer Service
If not for a post-college change of career plans, today Bill Marshall would be Dr. Marshall.
The Rebuilding Together-AFF team leader earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and pre-med from Fairfield University in 1975, but he couldn’t shake his love of building things that began with construction jobs during high school and college. “At the end of the day, looking at what you did was always pretty cool,” he recalls.
So instead of entering medical school, Bill earned another B.S. in civil engineering at the University of Connecticut in 1977.
His first job with a commercial contractor brought him back to Fairfield University as project manager for a gymnasium addition. From 1983 to 1989, he ran construction operations in Connecticut and New York for Lusk Corp., then the largest single-family home builder in the United States.
In 1989, Bill and a partner bought a construction business, Artisans Home Builders, from its retiring owners and “started doing 15,000- to 25,000-square-foot homes for Wall Street people and movie stars” in Connecticut, Long Island, N.Y., and Nantucket, Mass. During the next 28 years, their clients included actor-director Ron Howard (“one of the nicest people I have ever met”), hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, financier Henry Kravis, Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill, and “some I can’t name.”
One project was a multimillion-dollar children’s playhouse for a Greenwich family. For Kravis, an avid equestrian, Artisans built what was then one of the largest indoor riding rinks without internal support columns. Weill frequently visited his home’s construction site and once asked Bill to “give me something to do.” Bill handed him a broom and pointed to a room full of construction debris, which Weill willingly cleaned.
A Lifetime of Service
Bill has served in many volunteer roles—many of them serving children.
In the 1980s, he and a Lusk colleague collaborated to create the first Ronald McDonald House in Connecticut near Yale New Haven Hospital. Bill “helped find a house, hire an architect, hire the contractor and ran the job”—then served on its board of directors until 2000.
He also was a Cubmaster and Scoutmaster for 27 years; chaired the Fairfield, Conn., Parks and Recreation Commission for 10 years; was president of his neighborhood association in Fairfield for 10 years; and served on the board of the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, Conn., for four years.
A longtime golfer, Bill at one time boasted a 4 handicap. Through a friend’s father, a member of Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, he was invited to play practice rounds with professional golfer Rory McIlroy the week before the 2010 Masters tournament.
After a divorce, Bill crossed paths in 2010 with a former girlfriend he had not seen in decades. Amy, recently widowed, was an analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., where Bill often visited his son attending George Washington University. They wed in 2013, managing a long-distance marriage until Bill sold his interest in Artisans in 2017 and moved to Northern Virginia. Now both retired, Bill and Amy travel frequently to visit their six children and five grandchildren and spend winter months in Florida.
Soon after relocating, Bill read an article about RT-AFF and realized it was the perfect volunteer opportunity. He soon became a team leader who assesses clients’ houses, plans the repairs and supervises volunteer teams, and served on the board of directors for six years.
“In retirement, if you can do something that you enjoy, that you’re somewhat good at and that people have a need for, those are all good things,” he says. In addition to the flexibility RT-AFF offers its volunteers, “it’s a wonderful group of people who are committed and many of them have fantastic skills. I’ve learned a lot from them, and I enjoy teaching, too.”
On every project, “You get to work with some great people and learn some things and you get to feel really good when you’re done.”
Links:
Bill Marshall’s Impact at Rebuilding Together AFF
https://rebuildingtogether-aff.org/bill-marshalls-impact-at-rebuilding-together-aff/
