Obituaries
Please alert us to the recent death of any other Rhodes Scholar by emailing communications@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
Merton College Charitable Corporation has lost its leader. A loyal supporter of Merton College, Fordham University and an important part of the Rhodes Scholar community, John was an outstanding role model. In the legal profession he was a masterful exemplar of the profession’s dual private and public roles - fighting the world’s good fights in pursuit of justice, liberty and opportunity. His family and friends, especially his soul mate Susan, lost one of a kind who is irreplaceable in our lives and will not be forgotten.
Ray Nichols – a Rhodes scholar, professor and head of the department of politics at Monash University, and a lively contributor to public affairs – has died aged 81.
Ray took his BA (honours) at KU, with a double major in politics and history. He spent three years as a Rhodes scholar at Trinity College, Oxford, being deeply influenced by Wittgenstein, and earning his master’s under the supervision of Isaiah Berlin. From Oxford, he went to Princeton on Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships, and earned his PhD in record time; he won a Danforth post-doctoral fellowship, and, in 1965, he became of the founding fathers of the new University of California campus at Santa Cruz, as a fellow of Cowell College.
McManus, a 1956 graduate of Davidson College, became a Rhodes Scholar in 1958 after receiving a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University. From 1987 until 1995, Jason D. McManus was the Editor-in-chief of Time, Inc., a multi-platform branded media company with more than 90 publications in the United States and United Kingdom, including TIME, People, Cooking Light, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, Real Simple, and Sports Illustrated. As Editor-in-chief, Mr. McManus was the overseer of all of the company’s magazines.
From 1985 until 1987, Mr. McManus was the managing Editor of TIME magazine. He served as the magazine’s corporate Editor from 1983 until 1985, Executive Editor from 1979 until 1983, and Assistant Managing Editor of the magazine from 1975 until 1978. Mr. McManus served as Senior Editor of TIME from 1968 until 1975 and directed the magazine’s coverage of the Watergate scandal and resignation of President Nixon.
From 1964 until 1968, Mr. McManus was the Associate Editor of TIME and common market bureau chief in Paris from 1962 until 1964. Prior to this, he worked at the magazine as a full-time writer in TIME’s World section from 1959 until 1962. Mr. McManus joined Time, Inc. in 1957 as a summer intern at Sports Illustrated.
Charles Robin Ashwin (1952) was born in Adelaide, South Australia on September 27, 1930 and grew up in a house that his parents had built by the River Torrens. He preferred the name ‘Robin’ to the name ‘Charles’, and was known as ‘Zug’ to his friends. Robin died peacefully in his own bed, surrounded by his family on September 14, 2019. After attending Pulteney Grammar, St Peters College and the University of Adelaide where he excelled in both academics and sport, he came to New College as a Rhodes scholar in 1952. Robin’s interest in international affairs was kindled at a young age and his Rhodes Scholarship application essay was on the topic of forms of international governance. After graduating at Oxford he was offered a cadetship at the Australian Department of External Affairs. His first posting was to the Australian Delegation to the UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK) in Seoul. Robin’s job involved observing and reporting on development of democracy in a South Korea that was still very much suffering from the effects of the Korean War. While he was there he met and fell in love with a young Korean woman, Okche Chon, who would become his wife and life partner. They were married in Sydney in May 1959, and later had a son, Kim and a daughter, Mulan.
Various postings followed, including London, Bonn, Bangkok and New York. Robin was posted as Ambassador to Egypt in 1975. He took a keen interest in the Middle East peace process, and was an early supporter of the Palestinian cause. He was posted as Australian Ambassador to Bonn and then to Moscow in 1982, and 1987 respectively. From those two vantage points he witnessed and advised the Australian Government on the events leading up to and including the end of the Cold War. Robin had great faith in people, and those who worked with him considered him a wonderful boss and appreciated his management style. He believed in offering opportunities to young officers and mentored a new generation of Australian diplomats who have served, or are currently serving, at the highest levels of the Australian foreign service. He was, in particular, supportive of the careers of women officers in the Department, who in the early days had many obstacles to overcome to achieve equality with their male colleagues. After retiring from the diplomatic service in 1990 Robin accepted the position of Master of St Marks College in Adelaide, where he helped South Australian students to make the most of their university years during the 1990s. Robin was very involved in the academic and social life of the college and was much loved by his students. He retired as Master in 1999.
Robin was irreverent, occasionally iconoclastic. He saw through the nonsense and was happy to puncture pomposity. He was always laughing when he was telling a story or seeing the humour in a situation. He had a great love of mountains and mountain climbing. He ascended the Dom in Switzerland as a young man and much later scrambled up Mont Blanc with his daughter.
From his early days in Adelaide, Robin Ashwin innately understood that people had to find better ways to communicate and cooperate internationally, and he worked hard to better the world through diplomatic means. He understood that the challenges we face are increasingly global in nature, and that national interest, narrowly defined, often stands in the way of solutions. Many of his views seem prescient now, as we come to understand the vulnerability of democracy and civil society, and the importance of working across borders to solve the world’s pressing problems.
Professor Graham Leighton Hutchinson (Victoria & Magdalen 1971) served as Australia’s National Secretary for almost 20 years, between 1997 and 2015. Prior to that, Graham was the ARSA State Secretary for Victoria between 1990 and 2006. As these long periods of service demonstrate, Graham was dedicated to advancing the Rhodes Scholarships both internationally and locally. According to his successor, National Secretary Marnie Hughes-Warrington (Tasmania & Merton 1992), “Graham’s passion for Rhodes, as well as for engineering, reflected a deep gratitude for the opportunities he was given as a student. His work reflected a belief in the never-ending potential of the Scholarship to transform lives”.
Despite Graham’s ill health, he and his wife Penny were able to attend the last RSA National Dinner back in March. The evening was a special opportunity for Scholars to reconnect and reminisce with Graham, and to thank him for his decades of service, most memorably during a short ceremony in which he was awarded life membership of ARSA.
The Rhodes community will miss Graham greatly. His predecessor, former National Secretary John Poynter (Victoria & Magdalen 1951), remarked recently, Graham’s ‘too-early passing leaves us all with so much to remember, and admire.’
James Atlas was a leading figure in New York literary circles as an Editor, Publisher, and as a writer. His books included well-regarded biographies of Saul Bellow and the poet Delmore Schwartz. He died on Wednesday 4 September in Manhattan. He was 70.
Desmond Dillon Paul Morton was born on September 10, 1937 in Calgary, Alberta. He died peacefully at home on September 4, 2019 in Montreal Quebec at 81 years of age. Beloved husband of Gael Eakin; father of David and Marion; granddad to Ava. Remembered fondly by Gael's children, Fay Plant (Tom), Lorna St. Louis (Paul), Brenda Plant, Margo Plant (Sevak); and grandchildren, Christian and Charles St. Louis, and Aiden and Gregory Burgess. Desmond was a graduate of the Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean/Royal Military College of Canada, as well as University of Oxford (a Rhodes Scholar) and the London School of Economics (LSE) at University of London. He was a respected professor of Canadian and military history for over 2 decades at both University of Toronto and McGill University. Desmond was also Principal of Erindale College (now UTM) in Mississauga and Founding Director of McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC) in Montreal. Desmond was known for his intelligence, wry sense of humour and his talent as an orator and as a writer authoring over forty books. In his free time, he enjoyed spending hours in his workshop making handcrafted wooden models of military vehicles, vessels and personnel. A diligent correspondent, he faithfully wrote weekly letters to family members and close friends about current topics. Desmond will be dearly missed by all who knew him. A Celebration of Life will be held for him at the Faculty Club of McGill University on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 at 11 a.m. Donations in lieu of flowers to Canadian War Museum or McGill University (for MISC or Friends of the Library).
Richard D. Nehring passed away on August 27, 2019, at age 76 in Colorado Springs. Richard earned a B.A in History at Valparaiso University (1965) and attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1965. He went on to become a Danforth Fellow at Stanford University, where he pursued his doctorate in Political Science (1967-72). During that time he also worked at the office of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Interior before joining the Rand Corp., where he spent a decade as a project director of fossil fuel supply issues in their Energy Policy Program.
Born and raised in Brisbane, Tom Baxter was educated at Brisbane Grammar School. He played his club rugby for the University of Queensland from where he was selected to make his senior representative debut for Queensland against the Springboks in 1956.
In 1968, Baxter was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Baxter received two Blues for Oxford in 1958 and again in 1959. During his time in England, Baxter also played club rugby for Blackheath.