Obituaries

Tom Baxter (Queensland & Balliol 1958) was born and raised in Brisbane and educated at Brisbane Grammar School. He played 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. Baxter received two Blues for Oxford in 1958 and again in 1959. During his time in England, Baxter also played club rugby for Blackheath. Tom was a Rhodes Scholar, a Wallaby and a successful engineer.

Elmer Sprague die on April 19, 2019 at the age of 94. He was a member of the Brooklyn College Philosophy Department for more than four decades, until his retirement in 1997.

In 1941 Elmer entered the University of Nebraska, where he studied under O.K. Bousma and received a B.A. degree. After three years of military service during World War II he received a Rhodes scholarship in 1947, entered Oxford University the following year and received his D. Phil. degree in 1952. Although Elmer acknowledged that he came, if only temporarily, under the influence of logical positivism at Oxford, his interest in the philosophy of his teacher Gilbert Ryle and the ideas of the “later” Wittgenstein began during his Oxford years and continued for the rest of his life.

From 'In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Elmer Sprague (1924 - 2019)' by Professor Emeriti Eric Steinberg and Abigail L. Rosenthal. 

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.

Read more. 

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.’

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.