Courtesy of Donna Boyd

Radford University anthropology professor Cliff Boyd (center) at a dig site in this undated photo."They can tell me their story just through their bones," Boyd says of skeletal remains.

Cliff Boyd talks to his anthropological theory class in Reed Hall, just across from the lab he shares with his wife, Donna. "We love it," Cliff says of working with his wife.

Photos by ALAN KIM The Roanoke Times

Cliff and Donna Boyd burn up the floor during a party hosted by Donna in honor of her husband's Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Donna won the award last year. At top: The Boyds share a lab in Radford University's Reed Hall.

Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Husband and wife and colleagues in Radford University's anthropology department, Cliff and Donna Boyd are comfortable with other people's bones.

RADFORD -- Her bones lay on a table, ordered almost as they had been in life.

But the table was shorter than she had been, so her skull was down by her left elbow.

No one knows the woman's name, but we know she was a slave and we know that her grave was disturbed by development in Northern Virginia.

At the next table, Cliff and Donna Boyd were having lunch. Husband and wife and colleagues in Radford University's anthropology department, the Boyds are comfortable with other people's bones.

"We've had skeletons in our home," Cliff said. "We've worked on projects where we've had skeletons laid out on our kitchen table."

Last month, Cliff was honored with the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia at a ceremony that included Gov. Tim Kaine. Donna won that award and a national professor of the year award last year. They are co-directors of the Radford University Forensic Science Institute and passionately devoted to learning and teaching and introducing undergraduate students to anthropology, forensic science and the tales the dead can tell.

"Let them talk to us," Cliff said. "They can tell me their story just through their bones."

Age, gender, diet, traumatic events, how they worked and lived and died -- clues to all that are hidden in a person's bones. Decoding those clues change skeletal remains from an artifact into a person.

"I look at them as people," Cliff said, "but as people who can tell me something about themselves through their bones. I feel fortunate and privileged to be able to deal with them in that fashion."

Both Boyds' parents were teachers. Growing up, Donna saw her English professor mother's long hours and short pay and how educators are undervalued. "I thought, 'Why would anybody do that?' "

Now she knows.

"Honestly," she said, "there's nothing better than coming out of a class that went well."

Some married couples might cringe at the thought of sharing workspace, collaborating on projects, traveling to conferences together, presenting papers together, bringing work home together -- doing virtually everything together. Not the Boyds.

"It's wonderful," Donna said.

"We love it," Cliff said.

"We complement each other," Donna said.

He said she's much better at evaluating teeth and trauma in their subjects. She said he has an uncanny ability to identify bones from the tiniest fragments.

"I put together a lot of model airplanes as a kid," Cliff said.

The Boyds grew up in Tennessee, children of East Tennessee State University professors. Her mother taught him English. They both went to the on-campus school that was something of a lab for the education department.

"I was in the fourth grade and he was a senior. So I remember him," Donna said. "We weren't dating then."

After high school, Cliff earned a degree in sociology and art from East Tennessee State. He'd grown up on a cattle farm. He'd never flown. He'd never seen the ocean.

He saw an ad.

"It said, 'If you're a liberal arts graduate with experience in agriculture, the Peace Corps is interested in you,' " Cliff said. "I said, 'That sounded like me.' "

He spent two years on Colombia's Caribbean coast, helping farmers take care of their cattle. He did vaccinations, castrations, branding. He traveled between farms on a motorcycle, a bright orange Honda Trail 90. He lived in a city with 200,000 people and no traffic lights.

"I don't think it would have mattered if they had traffic lights," Cliff said. "Basically, the rule was the bigger the vehicle you had, the more right of way you had."

His puny motorbike put Cliff at the bottom of the right-of-way pecking order.

He lived with a Colombian family and made about $165 a month. That put him squarely in the Colombian middle class. Cliff called his time in the Peace Corps a defining experience. He still keeps in touch with people he met there.

There was more culture shock on the trip home than on the move from East Tennessee to South America.

A kiosk in the Miami airport was selling pet rocks.

"I came back at the height of the disco era," Cliff said. "That was scary."

When he left, people were listening to the Eagles. When he came back, they were listening to Donna Summer and wearing leisure suits. Fortunately, he had a few months on his parents' farm before beginning graduate school -- time to decompress.

Cliff started work on a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Donna, who graduated high school a year early, was there as an undergraduate, studying to become a veterinarian.

"We just met on the street one day," Donna said. "I didn't even know what anthropology was."

But she knew it was something that interested Cliff. So she took an anthropology course.

"Sort of as an elective and sort of as a way to talk to him," Donna said. "To get a date."

That was four academic degrees, one marriage and three children ago. Now they share a lab and a career.

"We look at bones as fresh as a few days ago all the way back to 10,000 years," Cliff said.

Indian burial sites, Civil War battlefields, old graveyards -- they've all been the subject of the Boyds' studies. As adjunct members of the medical examiner's office, they've identified remains of bodies that have been buried, weathered or burned beyond recognition. Sometimes the mysteries behind the bones are never solved.

Once, a hiker found a skull at the base of Mill Mountain and the Boyds and their students were called in to find out what happened.

"We searched that hill from top to bottom," Cliff said.

They never found the rest of the body.

In 1996, the specter of death -- so much a part of their daily lives -- came to the Boyds in a different way. Cliff was diagnosed with cancer -- adenoid cystic carcinoma of the soft palate.

"You think, 'Oh my, I'm going to die,' " Cliff said.

He was depressed at first. A song could set him to crying. They stopped making long-range plans -- and one year became long range.

Then something changed.

"I decided you can't sit in a corner and worry about everything," Cliff said.

He went through surgery and radiation treatments. The next year, doctors found more cancer. There was more radiation and three more operations. Nine years after the first diagnosis, doctors found more cancer. That meant more radiation.

Twice a week, Cliff had radiation treatments at 8:30 a.m. in Charlottesville, then drove to Radford to teach a class in theory and another about American Indians.

"I loved those classes so much I didn't want to give them up," he said. "I could be sitting around twiddling my thumbs and worrying about things or I could be preparing for class and grading papers."

Cabinets line one wall of the Boyds' lab. Inside are drawers of bones and fragments of bones. Cardboard boxes are stacked three high along the opposite wall. There's a human skeleton in each one. Surrounded by what death leaves behind, Cliff seems to have come to terms with the tenuousness of life -- including his own.

"I do respect and love life," he said. "I respect death."

Birth and death provide boundaries for life, part of a natural cycle, he said. But death -- and the contemplation of it -- can also be a teacher.

"Just as medical examiners and forensic anthropologists like Donna and I learn about an individual's life and death from his or her autopsy or skeletal analysis, so too do we learn about ourselves -- who we are, what is most important -- by facing our own death," Cliff said.

His daily contact with human remains constantly refreshes those lessons for Cliff. He doesn't put things off like he might have before. He's more dedicated to enjoying life. And he's given himself more freedom to speak his mind, perhaps a little more frankly than he might have spoken before.

Anything else would be wasteful.

"Time," he said, "is of the essence."