Since 1963, he has been a mostly annual contributor (“I may have missed a year or two,” he laughs) and has a great lifetime history of giving. However, recently he has even increased from that, responding to the evolving needs of the institution and answering the call.
In the past decade, Lockyer has raised his annual gift and became a member of the President’s Advisory Council, offered support to a rising eighth grader to attend the Prep U Summer Program, given money for current-use scholarships, supported endowment and made a major gift to the For Others Forever Capital Project. It is an act of a man who appreciates all that the Prep gave him.
“My experience at the Prep was very positive and I found it enjoyable,” Lockyer says. “They take young boys and, in four years, turn them into young men. It is truly an exceptional place.”
Lockyer recalls the mix of Jesuits and legendary lay teachers who challenged him and his classmates academically. “It was a good mix of people, faculty and students.”
Lockyer commuted to the Prep from Melrose Park, where he and his family moved after relocating from suburban Washington, DC. Teachers in grade school encouraged him and his mother pushed him to pursue the Prep. “She was strongly in favor of education and she was right about the Prep,” he said. “I had a good time and I learned a lot.”
His love of the Jesuits pushed him to apply to one school: Fordham University in the Bronx. After years of studying the Classics at the Prep, he pursued a major in it at Fordham, with the intention of teaching and perhaps becoming a college president. That led him to grad school at Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. However, he also was interested in the securities business.
“I thought I could do that for 10 to 20 years and go back and teach if I wanted,” he remembers.
That led him to a four-decades long varied career that took him from Philadelphia to Washington, DC and Dallas, working in the banking industry and practicing law (yes, he went to Georgetown University law school in his 50s to “try something different and reinvent” himself).
Lockyer is retired now and widowed after his wife Karen passed away recently. The couple met in sixth grade at St. Joseph’s School in Melrose Park and attended the Prep Homecoming together at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in 1958. He says, “It was a big event and when I look back on it, that was when I fell in love with her. It took her a little longer to catch on though,” he says with a laugh.
The couple was married for 52 years, have three children and seven grandchildren. And of course, Lockyer supports their schools too, but nothing like the Prep.
“I really want to continue to support the Prep as best I can,” he says.