Obituaries

At a picnic one spring day in 1977, John Churchill told a Yale faculty member that he had gotten a job at Hendrix College and was moving back to Arkansas, where his infant son would grow up without an accent. “The joke blew right past him, clear and clean,” Churchill later told a crowd at Hendrix.

By 1977, Churchill had been a Rhodes Scholar, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oxford and was finishing up his dissertation for a Ph.D. from Yale University. He spent the next 24 years at Hendrix, where he twice served as interim president, and his pickled okra won a blue ribbon at the Faulkner County Fair. Then for 15 years he was the chief executive officer of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society, in Washington, D.C.

Churchill, 70, died peacefully in his sleep at a hospital in Nashville, 42 miles east of his home in Dickson, where he moved after retiring in 2016. He had been battling a septic infection, according to the family.

Born April 1, 1949, John Hugh Churchill spent the first few years of his life in Hector, where his father, Olen R. Churchill, was superintendent of schools.

The family moved to Little Rock, where John Churchill took an interest in the girl next door, Jean Hill. They began dating at the age of 16, later married, had three kids and remained together the rest of his life.

Some of their fondest memories were living in a cottage in Kirtlington, about 12 miles north of Oxford, while John was studying in England.

Years later, John Churchill would occasionally torment his children with exotic dishes like pickled herring.

Churchill graduated from Little Rock’s Hall High School before attending Southwestern (now Rhodes College) at Memphis, where he was captain of the football team, conference champion at throwing the discus, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

For 17 of those 24 years at Hendrix, Churchill served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college. He had also been dean of students at Hendrix and taught philosophy throughout his time there.

Ann Die Hasselmo, who was president of Hendrix for nine years, said Churchill was “a prince of a man,” brilliant, ethical and humane.

“There aren’t many people about whom I can say this, there is nothing laudatory or flattering that you can say about John Churchill that would not be true,” Hasselmo said. “He was a remarkable, an amazing human being. Those of us who knew John and Jean mourn with the family and count ourselves fortunate to have walked a bit down the path with him.”

Richard E. Stewart died at age 85 on October 13. Mr. Stewart graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University where his father was president of the University, after which he earned Congratulatory First-Class Honors in Roman Law at Queen's College Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Following Oxford, he served in the U.S. Army providing legal assistance to soldiers of the U.S. Army 43rd brigade of Hawaii which had been distinguished for its bravery during WWII. He then earned his jurisprudence degree with honors from Harvard Law School in 1959.

He was the Superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department from 1967 to 1971, and became a leader in insurance in the United States and recognised internationally.

He initiated legislation that transformed insurance regulation in New York State and nationwide. Among his innovations were an exploration of the potential of no fault auto insurance, establishing an insurance pool to make essential fire insurance available to residents of urban ghettos, a program to make auto insurance more widely available, to protect consumers against insurance cancellation and against loss due to insurer insolvency and changed property liability insurance rate regulation to an open competitive and antitrust basis. Governor Nelson Rockefeller described Stewart as "the best Superintendent of Insurance in the history of the State."

He went on to be Senior Vice President and General Counsel of First National City Bank, now Citibank and Citigroup. In 1973, he became Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Chubb & Son. In 1981 left to start his own firm, Stewart Economics, Inc., a consulting firm that specialised in insurance and insurance regulation. His major work became consulting for legal teams involved in major controversies such as water pollution and the national breast implant cases.

He was a member of the Special Panel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices (1974) and the United Nations Panel of Experts on Transnational Bank Failure.

He was a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Associates, The Century Association in New York City and the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C.

In 2006, when he reduced his work load, Mr. Stewart began a new life in San Francisco where he became involved with the effort to protect the city's waterfront from over-development. He played a major role in a pair of ballot measure campaigns in 2013 and 2014 known as the "No Wall on the Waterfront" where voters overwhelmingly rejected excessive waterfront height increases and approved permanent waterfront preservation rules. He now leaves a beautiful and protected waterfront for all to use and enjoy.

Besides his varied and consequential achievements, positions and accomplishments were his extraordinary memory of past events and people, keen, sharp intellect, wide-ranging, broad comprehension of current issues and ability to place them into historical and even philosophical context, and despite his increasing health problems, remain upbeat, acknowledging his frailties but never complaining about them or letting them interfere with his life, remaining and continuing to have a very positive outlook on life and a confidence in the people around him including his doctors and their medical interventions. He was always willing and interested in trying new things and embracing the newest technological innovations with an almost child-like fascination and pleasure in so doing.

Mr. Stewart is survived by his two cats, Kitzmiller named after his childhood cat, and Lionel, and his wife and scuba diving companion Barbara Dickson Stewart.

Published in San Francisco Chronicle.

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.