Gordon Marshall, the founder of electronics giant Marshall Industries and a University of Southern California trustee for whom the institution’s business school was named, died Tuesday in Pasadena at the age of 95. Marshall, a 1946 USC graduate, enrolled there after serving as a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II. The Southern California native founded El Monte’s Marshall Industries in 1953 and grew the company into one of the nation’s largest distributors of industrial electronic components before selling to Phoenix’s Avnet Inc. in 1999. In 1997, USC names its business school after him following his donation of $35 million, at the time the largest amount ever given to a business school. “Gordon Marshall was a soft-spoken man with a powerful entrepreneurial spirit and a profound dedication to the University of Southern California,” USC President C. L. Max Nikias said in a statement. “His commitment to USC spanned seven decades, and his extraordinary philanthropy gave a dramatic boost to business education at this university.”
